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Acknowledgements
Each book has a story and this one is no exception. The first ideas on how to approach this project emerged in Galway, where I spent an incredibly rewarding research leave in the spring of 2013. I am especially indebted to the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the NUI Galway for enabling me to conceptualize my habilitation thesis in a truly inspiring and carefree environment. I kept working on the book throughout the years that followed, with another period of research leave taking me to Mauritius before I submitted my habilitation thesis at the end of 2015. A special thanks goes to my alma mater, the University of Innsbruck, and my colleagues at the Department of Philosophy for their reliable support and solid friendship. My habilitation thesis was published in German by Velbrück in 2017. I started working on a revised and shortened version in English in the same year, invigorated by the time I spent as a visiting fellow at the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School in 2016. The experience was simply overwhelming. I never imagined I would find a place with such a concentration of brilliant minds and wonderful personalities. My gratitude for that opportunity (which was the start of many more visits to the region) cannot be put into words.
All along the road I have traveled, I have been blessed with interactions with people from different spheres of academic and non-academic life who have nurtured my mind and heart with their experiences and (different) views or have otherwise enabled me to complete this work. I am
afraid I am unable to provide an exhaustive list here, but I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the following people in particular: Hadeel Abu Hussein, Rebecca Agule, Ebrahim Afsah, Asma Afsaruddin, Maria Bertel, Mashood Baderin, Shubhangi Bhadada, Günter Bischof, Yonatan Brafman, Noelia Bueno-Gomez, Juan Pablo Calderon-Meza, Priyanka Chirimar, Anna Crowe, Fred Dallmayr, Marzieh Tofighi Darian, Bonnie Docherty, Jack Donnelly, Dez, Sylvia Eibl, Reinhold&Lydia Frick, Theresa Frick&Massimo Ligazzolo, Annette Gordon-Reed, Gudrun Grabher, Sabine&Daniele Trevisani-Farneti, Yasser Latif Hamdani, Stefan Hammer, Timo Heimerdinger, Henrietta, Henry&Catalina, Yee Htun, Theo Hug, Aleksey Ihorovych, Joy&Andreas Karabaczek, Emily Keehn, Stephan Kirste, Manuela Klammer, Hans Köchler, Hans-HerbertKögler, Antti Korkeakivi, Peter Kügler, Raphael Lepuschitz, Georg Lohmann, Lukas, Luzi, Reinhard Margreiter, Mario&Molly, Mei, Ulrich Metschl, Reinhard Merkel, Josef Mitterer, Yasien Mohamed, Monirá, Sam Moyn, Andreas Th. Müller, Mohd Faizal Musa, Elmar Nass, Joanne Neenan, Michaela Neulinger, Gerald L. Neuman, Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, Pamela Nwakanma, Andreas Oberprantacher, Remigius Orjiukwu, Pascaline, Pete, Miriam Plaickner, Denise Quistorp, Nani Jansen Reventlow, Jimena Reyes, Georg Schildhammer, Sean, Ashvin&Pooja Seetal, Sherene&Ritwik Samsi, Anne Siegetsleitner, Peter Singer, Jay&Luitgard Soni, Peter Stöger, Zsuzsi&Sarab, Mohammed Mehdi Taskhiri, Markus Tscharnig, Mostafa Vaziri&Allison Lide, Usama, Caro Voithofer, Salma Waheedi, Jia Wang, Jürgen Wiebicke, Andreas Wimmer, Aloisia Wörgetter, Yi-Li Lee, and Hamid Reza Yousefi. Finally, I would like to thank Palgrave Macmillan for the smooth publication process and in particular Brendan George and Lauriane Piette for the valuable assistance.
About the Author
Marie-Luisa Frick born 1983 in Lienz in Austria, works as Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck. She has published extensively on human rights, legal, and moral philosophy. A visiting fellow at the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School in 2016, she is also engaged in cultural diplomacy and upon invitation of the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has contributed to bilateral religious dialogues with Indonesia, Iran, and China.
List of Abbreviations
ACHPR African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights (Banjul Charta)
ACHR American Convention on Human Rights
ACRWC African Charter on the Rights and the Welfare of the Child
AI Amnesty International
AL Arab League
ArabCHR Arab Charter of Human Rights
Art. article(s)
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
AU African Union (formerly: OAU, Organisation of African Unity)
CAT Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
CDHRI Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam
CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women
ch. chapter(s)
CoE Council of Europe
CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child
CRPD Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
CRSR Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
DDHC Declaration des Droits de l‘Homme et du Citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen)
DH (Declaration) Dignitatis Humanae
DI (United States) Declaration of Independence
Dt (Book) Deuteronomy
e.g. exempli gratia, for example
ECHR European Convention on Human Rights
ECJ European Court of Justice
ECtHR European Court of Human Rights
esp. especially
EU European Union
Ex (Book) Exodus
f., ff., following page(s)
FGM female genital mutilation
fn. footnote
Gal Epistle to the Galatians
GC Grand Chamber
Gen (Book) Genesis
HRC (United Nations) Human Rights Committee
i.e. id est/that is to say
ibid. ibidem/at the same place
ICC International Criminal Court
ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
OIC Organization of Islamic Cooperation (formerly: Organization of the Islamic Conference)
OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
p(.p). page(s)
para. paragraph(s)
UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights
UK United Kingdom
UN(O) United Nations (Organization)
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNFPA United Nations Population Fund
(UN)GA (United Nations) General Assembly
UNHCR (United Nations) High Commissioner for Refugees
UNHRC United Nations Human Rights Council (formerly: Human Rights Commission)
(UN)SC (United Nations) Security Council
UNTC
United Nations Treaty Collection
UNTS United Nations Treaty Series
US(A) United States (of America)
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
VCLT Vienna Conference on the Law of Treaties
vs., v. versus
WHO World Health Organization
1
Introduction
Human rights resound everywhere: Underpinning a quasi-universal secular morality they function as a ‘bench mark’ for political decision-making procedures (discursive legitimacy), for the aims and boundaries of political actions (outcome legitimacy), and finally for the overall evaluation of political systems as such (governmental legitimacy). A “last utopia”1 for the time being, human rights seem to outshine all rival visions for a better world and give a name to the age in which we live, the “age of rights”.2
Evidence of the increasing significance of human rights (at least in theoretical terms) can also be found in the discursive ‘explosion’ on the matter filling a vast global human rights library. Its philosophical branch draws our attention to questions that contrast the widespread common-sense understanding and rhetoric of human rights: what are human rights actually? Who decides what is a human right? Are they moral or judicial norms in the first place? What are their foundations and how can human rights be justified? What does their non-finalized stipulation, rendering human rights a medium of continuous intercultural encounters between scholars, policy makers, and activists, tell us about their nature or their future? Are human rights really a suitable normative guiding idea for humankind that, on their road to unification and understanding, faces
M.-L. Frick, Human Rights and Relative Universalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10785-7_1
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equally strong tendencies of cultural/regional differentiation and identitarian demarcation? Can human rights ever be the ‘moral lingua franca’ for eight billion people on five continents?
Unsurprisingly, answers to questions like these do not come from one voice but rather hint to different outlooks and approaches in terms of scholarly disciplines and also worldviews. Human rights are a prescriptive concept, evidenced by their historic origins in the modern revolutions of 1776 and 1789 as well as their re-birth out of the debris of master-race ideology and its apocalyptical consequences. They do not simply depict the world as it is but demand a particular orientation for political commonwealths, certain behavior of human beings towards each other, and put specific constraints on State organs in the way they treat (non-)citizens. Like any other normative concept, human rights are affected by an increasing pluralization of opinions and convictions, even though this sometimes tends to be overlooked or belittled. Human rights, as Joshua Greene laments but rightly observes, often do not enter the stage when arguments are settled but rather serve are shields we employ to safeguard “our moral progress from the threats that remain”, as well as weapons to bring about desired changes (cf. Greene 2013, pp. 306ff.).
The following investigation does not seek to resolve such diversity of voices in the global discourse on human rights. Rather, it is an attempt to step back from this discourse and to see the greater picture of what human rights could be if we assume that their universalization or global accommodation is in the making but not yet granted. This ambivalent diagnosis serving as a starting point can be understood better if we look at what the globalization (of ideas) almost always amounts to: On the one side, human rights have started to grow roots in various regional and even local contexts and it is commonly held that their future is decisively dependent upon such processes of enculturation.3 On the other side, such developments of ‘glocalization’ (cf. Robertson 1995) ensure that human rights do not remain what they ‘originally’ might have been: “When ideas or institutions expand from their place of origin to other regions, they inevitably transform their original nature or characteristic features in order to be accepted by the inhabitants of the regions to which they spread” (Yasuaki 1999, p. 112). Such processes of vernacularization are seldom without ambivalence. Sometimes, a formal commitment to human rights language
does not translate into actual relevance of human rights norms and ideals in practice. This often passes from view where, in the words of Kiran Kaur Grewal (2017, p. 142), “the appeal to an abstract universalized morality and a reluctance to engage in more substantial debates about how such a moral order should be decided upon and what it should contain” are convenient strategies of shielding human rights from potential critique. Another difficulty, referred to as “the resonance dilemma” by Sally Engle Merry and Peggy Levitt, also deserves mention in that regard: “The more extensively the human rights idea is vernacularized, the more readily it will be adopted but the less likely it is to challenge existing modes of thinking” (2017, p. 216).
Against this backdrop, I want to address the following interrelated questions: (1) What is the non-negotiable core of human rights? Which axiological-normative premises does this idea entail? (2) Which foundational paths do exist to ground (the idea of) human rights and what is their relation to each other? Can different grounding strategies coexist? (3) To what extent do the axiological-normative fundamentals of the human rights idea resonate with various sets of values and beliefs, or: how ‘stressable’ are they when transplanted into different contexts of worldview? How should we interpret conflicts over human rights? How should we maneuver between the universal and the local and what ‘red lines’ can the idea of human rights draw in that regard?
As this book is situated in the relativity/universality debate on human rights and my points of view will become clear in the following (sub-) chapters, it is crucial to briefly sketch the conceptual landscape according to my own theoretical and terminological account. Understood here as descriptive terms, relativity and universality pertain to the actual acceptance of human rights and their underpinning values. In that sense, saying that human rights are universal would amount to the claim that there is an effective consensus on the meaning and importance of human rights norms and values. On the other hand, holding that human rights are in fact relative suggests that their acceptance is conditioned upon certain sets of norms and values that are not shared among all people or traditions alike. There exists, however, a middle position that we can name relative universality according to which human rights are in fact shared as general principles whereas their specific meaning, scope, or implementation
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is subject to particularist interpretations. The right to life could serve as an example: Even if virtually all people would supposedly agree that this is an important right, they nevertheless might disagree whether or not abortion or capital punishment, for example, are reconcilable with it. A different question, yet not independent from empirical acceptance, is the one of universalizability. To raise it only makes sense once a nonuniversality stance has been taken. In that perspective, human rights may not (yet) be shared as a universal normative commitment, but could have the potential to be universal—depending on the cultural/religious conditions they meet in the course of their journey round the globe.
Furthermore, the question of human rights’ relativity/universality can also be raised on a metaethical level. Here it is the ontological status of their norms and values that is debated. Are human rights valid independently of peoples’ opinions (thesis of ontological absoluteness) or is their moral validity dependent on human acts of establishing and asserting them (thesis of ontological relativity)? Those who side with ontological absoluteness often regard human rights as (embodiments of) divine commands or unquestionable dictates of an authoritative human nature. From the perspective of ontological relativity by contrast, human rights appear as human constructs, not echoing an objective cosmos of rules and values, but rather represent reactions to contingent historical experiences or to the needs of a non-fixed human condition. Whereas the question of factual universality or relativity is a mere empirical one, ontological absoluteness or relativity is a matter of interpreting that very empirical reality. I will elaborate on this in Sect. 1.2 in more detail.
Adding to the complexity of the universality/relativity debate is the fact that it does not only involve a descriptive and an ontological or hermeneutical dimension, but also a prescriptive one. At the heart of this dimension lies the question: Should human rights be enforced and their acceptance requested even where they are not (fully) shared? Certain varieties of (cultural) relativism, for example, repudiate such human rights universalism. As a more nuanced position, relative universalism intends to balance universalism and relativism. It thereby makes use of the distinction between absolutism and universalism: That norms should be accepted or implemented everywhere on this planet does not yet determine whether or not this is done in consideration of local traditions, for
example. Whereas relative universalism allows for such particularist inseminations, absolute universalism demands that human rights are universally recognized and enforced without any deference to other (cultural) normative regimes. The core challenge for any relative universalism, and this is a main concern of this book, is to decide how far human rights can be compromised and how limits of legitimate deviances should be set. Otherwise, human rights run into danger of whateverism and misuse. Or, in the words of Stephen Hopgood: they soon will find themselves on a road to nowhere (cf. 2017, pp. 295ff.).
1.1
Beyond Catalogs of Rights: The Idea of Human Rights
The question what the core of human rights is, rests upon a central methodological distinction: that between the idea of human rights and contentladen lists or catalogs of human rights. This distinction between ‘essence’ and ‘forecourt’ is an invitation to focus on a core area that does not yet determine in detail the precise design of particular rights claims.4 It thus aligns with those approaches in the human rights field that aim to counter the rising inflation of ‘rights language’ and exuberant entitlement mentality with an emphasis on a distilled ‘essence’ of human rights.5 Whereas content designs of human rights are equally numerous and contested, the idea of human rights only conveys that there are certain claims—yet to be defined—that all human beings in virtue of being human should enjoy. The idea of human rights hence amounts to a claim entitlement of the first order (level I), that is an individual right to human rights which is the basis for the claim entitlement of the second order (level II).
The idea of setting apart these two dimensions might raise some questions as to the operability of human rights. Of course, what could count as a potential human right on the second level is not totally arbitrary. Already the first level does have, and this will be a main focus of analysis in the following chapters, important implications for the second. In particular, the equality dimension of the first order claim entitlement sets bounds to rights framed in an exclusive manner without a proper justifi-
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cation. Embodying an individual right to rights, the idea of human rights also excludes (second order) group entitlements. Apart from restrictions for the content of a list of claim entitlements on the second order extrapolated from the claim entitlement on the first order, there are additional reasons why not every claim seriously can be incorporated into a human rights catalog. These reasons may be obvious but it could be helpful to indicate them in some detail. First, human rights are claims specifically meaningful for people sharing a commonwealth. They express that an act, state or service is of particular importance, so important in fact that it should be guaranteed collectively. We can call this the relevance threshold. Why they are important is to a large degree dependent upon socialanthropological foundations: Humans as social beings are on the one side always exposed to repression by others or their groups, on the other side (only) these can offer support in terms of shelter from existential threats. Hence, human rights are never relevant in isolation, but are conceivable only within a social framing. That also means that human rights cannot be established by any single human being on their own; they have to be (re-)negotiated, explained, and affirmed. Further, a possibility threshold does apply: It is pointless to formulate or demand claims that nobody ever could guarantee, for example a right to immortality, eternal love, or sunshine every single day. This may seem like a trivial observation, but it does have implications for the double-nature of human rights as moral and legal claims (see Sect. 1.3) for not every entitlement we are maybe ready to assign to others can be guaranteed as a right in the strict sense. Just imagine a right to truth or not to be lied to. Finally, there is no point in designing claims without a certain amount of sincerity. That would exclude cynical claims, such as the right of everybody to everything, which is—as Thomas Hobbes taught so well—in fact everybody’s right to nothing (cf. Sect. 3.2.1).
If the relation between claim entitlements of the first order and claim entitlements of the second order is not arbitrary, the question could be raised: Does the idea human rights not already presuppose concrete rights beyond the abstract right to have rights? Can anybody reflect upon the idea of human rights and affirm it without enjoying, for example, the rights to freedom of thought or education? Is not the right to life of such a fundamental quality that the idea of human rights cannot be detached
from it? Here we have to mind the difference between logically deriving rights claims from the human rights idea and practical needs. Even though not necessary in the former sense, it is true that certain rights in fact are indispensable elements of any serious human rights catalog. However, what sort of rights claims are acknowledged on entitlement level II is not itself predetermined in a strict sense by entitlement level I. This finding however, leads to another potential unease with my approach expressed in terms of the doctrine of the indivisibility of human rights. In particular, in the time of the confrontation of Soviet and Western States this concept was supposed to fend off attempts to either prioritize political-liberal (or: negative) rights over social and economic (or: positive) rights and vice versa. In general, it serves the purpose of protecting the integrity of human rights (lists) from trading off some right(s) for others. Whereas it is true that abundance of one right or some rights cannot compensate for the lack of others, that does not mean that all (traditionally accepted) human rights are of equal importance. Indivisibility applies if, for instance, one State would argue that “In our country people may not have a right to work but enjoy the right to political participation” or another claims that “Our people do not have the freedom to assembly but enjoy free health care” since there is no general competition between such rights claims.6 Yet, indivisibility in terms of interdependency does not equal indivisibility in terms of egality of interests or goods. That the latter is hardly ever achievable is not only demonstrated by the way high courts balance and weigh different rights claims when they clash. Our intuition also suggests that freedom from torture does not rank in the same category as, for example, the right to “reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay” (UN 1948b, Art. 24).
In this light, the general refutation of weighing different rights against each other, as maintained for example by Martha C. Nussbaum in her capability approach, proves mistaken. None of her capabilities, she argues, could be subordinated to others below a certain minimum threshold.7 Nussbaum puts forward the following argument: Any abundance of rights to free time (and other social amenities) is no compensation for the total lack of a right to freedom of expression. This might appear plausible at first glance but it only clouds the reason why we would
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probably not accept such a trade-off: Simply because to most people a right to freedom of expression is of greater value than a right to leisure. If we turn Nussbaum’s example around (“An abundance of the right to freedom of expression is no compensation for the right to free time”), this becomes all the more evident. The right to free speech is important since only on its basis can any other right, including the right to free time, be claimed and advertised. Insisting upon the indivisibility of human rights in terms of their equal value would ultimately result in the creation of a dogma and neglect the possibilities to improve and further develop (traditional) human rights catalogs.
With this in mind, we can return to the question of the core of human rights and what it comprises. I conceptualize the axiological normative fundamentals of the idea of human rights in the form of two pillars, (a) universalism and (b) individualism. According to (a), everybody should enjoy human rights, that is the right to have rights. This is the equality dimension of human rights. The liberty dimension (b) is connected to the assumption that human rights are first and foremost rights of the individual (and therefore can and often do clash with interests of his or her larger social group). The nature of such universalism and individualism becomes apparent if we look at their opposites. Whereas in (a) the beneficiary of the stipulated rights claims is each and every human being, internal-universalisms or in-group universalisms only grant rights to members of a certain in-group. The antagonists of human rights individualism are, however, manifold: A cosmo-ontological collectivism according to which there is no such thing as a self and hence no individual rights bearer; a social-ontological collectivism which sees groups as the primary social phenomena and assigns rights to collective entities; and finally a functionalist collectivism, often rooted in the social-ontological collectivism, subordinating individual rights to greater collective goals other than establishing or maintaining a human rights regime. Usually, in such collectivist frameworks, imposing duties rather than granting rights serves as the premise of governance.
Prioritizing the idea of human rights over certain specific rights claims paves the way for a relative universalism, sometimes also called “weak cultural relativism” (Donnelly 1999, p. 83; 2003, p. 98) or “parametric universalism” (Scanlon 1998, p. 329). Here it is important to be aware of
the two concepts of universalism in the human rights context and not to confound them. That is, the universalism referring to the beneficiaries of rights entitlements (‘rights of every single human being’) is not the universalism aiming for the universal recognition and enforcement of human rights even though they are of course related: Those who want everyone to enjoy certain rights cannot but demand that everybody recognizes and respects them. However, we could still ask if this recognition has to be absolute, that is detached from local peculiarities, or relative, that is taking into account particular frameworks of norms and values. That human rights should be universally respected is the assertion of recognition universalism; that the way this respect is paid and expressed can look different in dissimilar places and times, is the conviction embedded in theories of relative (recognition) universalism.
The central idea underlying this approach to “the quandary of the universality and relativity” of human rights (An-Na‘im 2003, p. 4) is that for a certain normative body—here the idea of human rights—universal compliance is required whereas outside of it a normative forecourt opens up for particularities and their respective concretization. To some degree relative universalism equals the judicial concept of a (national) margin of appreciation (MA) (cf. ECtHR 1994; Brems 2003). In that sense, rights are supposed to be valid universally, but their implementation can be culture-sensitive, for example. The motto of such a relative universalism then reads: “Within these limits, all is possible. Outside of them, little should be allowed” (Donnelly 1999, p. 87). Jack Donnelly, most prominent for advocating relative universalism, distinguishes between different forms of universality: functional, international legal, overlapping consensus, anthropological and ontological (2007). Whereas he rejects the latter two, he still proposes to work in the direction of the other types of universality. His relative universalism operates with a top-down approach, distinguishing between (invariant) concepts, (variant) conceptions, and (flexible) implementation of human rights: “Concepts set a range of plausible variations among conceptions, which in turn restrict the range of practices that can plausibly be considered implementations of a particular concept and conception” (ibid., p. 300).8
My own version of relative universalism, however, does not build on these theoretical structures and will, unsurprisingly, arrive at sometimes
different conclusions. In the approach suggested here, the idea of human rights, i.e., the individual right to have rights, is taken as the starting point for any discussion about concrete human rights designs and deviations, and not a given practice of human rights or international human rights norms as such. In a first step, this sort of relative universalism opens up the floor for different traditions and worldviews to take this notion of human rights and build around it their versions of what human rights should achieve and what they should look like in concrete terms. Expecting substantial dissent here, we then have to ask in another step whether the proposed rights or rights concepts can be brought into general conformance with the limits the human rights idea itself entails. Hence, the purpose of differentiating between the core of human rights and the content of specific rights is primarily methodological, not categorical. Setting apart clear-cut incompatibilities from tensions between certain notions and practices on the one side and the idea of human rights on the other, enables us to make sense of human rights violations in a nuanced and principled manner. Furthermore, human rights conflicts can be narrowed down by relatively precisely locating where they are situated within the universalistic pillar of the human rights idea, the individualistic, or both. The (sort of) rights that can(not) be granted from a certain perspective thus help in understanding where and why the idea of human rights meets obstacles to its global accommodation. To enhance our understanding of the complex landscape of (anti-)human rights ideologies is as much an aim of the suggested approach as is the exploration of the limits of toleration and its different shades. Apart from the specifics of my own account, the general advantages of applying such a thin, yet all-but-blank concept of human rights lies in its potential to cope with the ambivalent processes of globalization mentioned above. For human rights, these processes expose the uncomfortable truth that with the decline of Western hegemony and also with the global demographic shifts that have occurred since contemporary human rights evolved in the middle of the last century, global discourses on human rights have become more strained and sometimes even frustrating (cf. also Hopgood 2017). Whereas a great deal has been achieved in universalizing the language of human rights and in improving actual living conditions for millions of people, tendencies of resistance to as well as
departures from traditional human rights standards are evident in large parts of the global South and North (cf. Frick 2013a). A pragmatic stance is preferable when faced with the choice of either imposing a traditional Western notion of human rights that obviously does not resonate in all human societies to the same degree, and therefore fails to achieve true universality, or giving in to unchecked relativism. The third way I propose amounts to opening up structured spaces for deliberation on what human rights should look like in the twenty-first century and aspiring for a relative universality instead.
The pragmatic generosity of middle ground positions between universalism and relativism of course also faces skepticism. Some fear it would only lead to “a surrender to the universalism of particularism” (O’Sullivan 2000, p. 32). Others ask: “What happens when there are different views on social and cultural issues, or if there are different definitions of freedom? Middle ground approaches seem to have no answers to such questions […]” (Dahre 2017, p. 618).9 As a matter of fact, the risk of human rights dissolving into something unrecognizable on the path to a more pluralistic ethos, has to be taken seriously. To concentrate on the defining axiological-normative premises of human rights is therefore indispensable. It also saves us from falling prey to the often implicitly assumed identification of consensus and validity. As much as agreement over human rights standards is desirable, we must not accept as genuine human rights virtually everything people from different backgrounds actually come to agree upon.
In addition to rather prudential rationales for a relative universalism, also an ethical argument can be put forward in its favor. If human rights are, as stated above, the rights of (wo)man as a social being and if humanity as a whole is both their beneficiary and addressee, the imposition of a certain thick notion of human rights would be—even if it were (still) possible—highly problematic. Dialogue on human rights between people of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds and different ideological outlooks today is not only unavoidable, it is above all necessary in order to do justice to the idea that human rights belong to all.
That is not to say, however, as some claim, that human rights do not have a specific origin in history.10 They are, in fact, a Western concept insofar as human rights—or originally “the rights of man”—emerged
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from the paradigm shift brought about by the social contract theories of the seventeenth century in the British Isles that led to the first rights declarations in human history.11 But does this finding determine Western societies to be human rights friendly quasi naturally and others to be inherently hindered from embracing them? This does not at all seem to be the case. How could human rights resonate in different parts of the world without respective connecting factors? In this regard, we can draw on the concept of human rights’ “placeful placelessness” (orthafte Ortlosigkeit) by the German-Indian philosopher Ram Adhar Mall (1998). Their origin, which is “a simple historical fact [and] not a matter for praise (or blame)” (Donnelly 1999, p. 69) does not exclude the possibility that human rights can find a home in the hearts and minds of people beyond the Western tradition. Here again the differentiation between human rights and the idea of human rights can provide some guidance. In vague contours the idea of human rights flashes up whenever moral systems (in history) break up the in-group/out-group dichotomy or also attach (some) importance on individual choices in life, for example in terms of religious salvation. We can trace it in the moral philosophy of ancient Sophists like Alkidamas or Hippias, in the cosmopolitanism of Stoicism, in the humanism of Mencius and many others. Also, today, various moral systems with inclinations to overcome internal-universalisms and at least some avenues for individual liberty offer important resources for the human rights idea,—“sister notions” as Eva Brems calls them (2001, p. 302)—even if not necessarily a fully-fledged concept of human rights itself. It is, however, important not to mistake general values like equity, benevolence, or peace already for the idea of human rights, much less modern human rights, as we know them.12 At the same time, we should keep in mind that for a specific society or culture to not have such a concept does not imply being inherently alien to it. As we will see, paying attention to these resources is at least as important as understanding the hurdles human rights encounter on their way towards what one day may become a true universal ethos. For this ethos to flourish it is of secondary importance who ‘invented’ human rights. The decisive test is who can fully subscribe to its axiological normative substance. Since “all nations and peoples come to human rights as equal strangers” (Baxi 2002/2007, p. 2), its ultimate outcome cannot be anticipated.
1.2 Human Rights as Assigned Claims
Where do people get their human rights from? This question may sound odd, if not utterly heretical. According to the standard narrative whose pathos can be found in both modern and contemporary human rights documents, we do not receive such rights from someone, nor can we ever lose them. They are “natural,” “self-evident truths,” “unalienable,” “innate” and so forth. Such rhetoric may be useful or even necessary to introduce a novel moral idea and to affirm it vis-à-vis reluctant or even more hostile responses. From a philosophical point of view, however, the objectivity of human rights norms, that is their validity independent of any one’s judgment, is in fact doubtful. The arguments on each side of this controversy cannot be summarized in sufficient detail here, but I will focus on a core challenge to every objectivist account of morality instead: the puzzle of the diversity of moral systems (argument from plurality). Everybody walking this earth (or maybe just his or her own society) with open eyes cannot but be astonished by the antagonistic plurality of moral views and opinions. If there are such things as true moral norms or objective values, we have to explain why not everybody is aware of them. In other words: why do people still disagree about what is right and what is good? Though such an explanation can be attempted, e.g., with a hypothesis of error or irrationality, only more questions will arise: In what exactly does such error or unreasonableness exist? In a lack of facts or in logical flaws? In an inappropriate interpretation of ‘moral facts’ and what are they anyway? And more importantly: If moral error is an option, how can I be sure not to be affected by it myself? As a hypothesis, moral error is a sword that can easily turn against oneself. Hence, it is startling that those adhering to moral cognitivism consider the possibility of moral error only when it comes to others with whom they disagree and almost never for themselves. As I have tried to show elsewhere (Frick 2017), a non-cognitivist stance evades these difficulties and is able to explain moral diversity straightforwardly with its thesis of ontological relativity: ‘There is no single true morality.’13
Of course, the strategy of questioning the existence of fundamental moral diversity as such, would still be available. Although one may suc-
M.-L. Frick
ceed in demonstrating that moral disagreements are merely superficial in some instances and point to basic shared principles for example, this approach must come to an end once disagreements are analyzed in their complexity, that is involving often more than one principle. Only one example of disagreement that is not merely superficial or a result of misunderstanding would suffice to bring the diversity-challenge back unscathed. To give just a brief example: In his magnum opus on the moral universe of mankind, Edward Westermarck—an outspoken ethical relativist himself—tells of an Inuit who walks his aged father into an icehole after he signaled to him that he is ready to depart this life and the suffering it involved due to his decay. Westermarck, trying to explain this behavior to his readers, interprets it as filial piety, a principle people from other or maybe even all cultural traditions can relate to.14 In this light, we could say that there is no genuine moral disagreement involved whenever a tribesman and a Westerner discuss the proper way of dealing with aged parents. Parenticide and geriatric care would simply spring from the same shared principle: Love for one’s parents. But what if there is more than one principle at stake here, say a general attitude towards human life and its worth? The reason why many people from a traditional Christian background would hesitate to interpret the principle of filial piety in terms of parenticide—even if there is some sort of informed consent—is the belief that life is sacred and ‘out of our own hands.’ For Inuit, so it seems in Westermarck’s example, life is precious if and only if it allows a human being to exercise his or her capabilities, e.g., to go hunting and be physically mobile. Once that is not possible anymore, as it is for most people at some point in time, death becomes preferable. Here, then, we have a disagreement that is all but superficial. In fact, it cannot run any deeper.
Sometimes another challenge is put to the view according to which human rights are eternal truths, the so-called ‘caveman-problem.’ If we conceive of human rights as a cultural product that originated in space and time and therefore relative to it, we have no difficulty in looking back at our far human or even pre-hominid ancestry and to say: Well, if they were living here right now, we probably would not exclude them from certain rights since they are (some sort of) human, but surely they did not possess human rights in the time they actually lived their lives. How
could they? As John Tasioulas puts it: “Perhaps we can intelligibly impute to the cavemen a right not to be tortured, but how can we reasonably ascribe to them rights that refer to activities that are barely conceivable, let alone feasible, in their historical epoch, such as rights to a fair trial or to political participation?” (2012, p. 32).15 If human rights really were objective truths, not only would we have to explain why until very recently they have not been a significant part of human thought and practice, but we would also have to look back at people living (hundreds of) thousands of years ago and still be ready to claim that what bestows human rights on them is not merely our very own compassionate perspective. To many, including myself, this seems markedly awkward. If human rights are not objective norms and values but “social constructions”, i.e., “something achieved not given or revealed” (Gregg 2012, p. 3) and therefore “nothing more than what human beings proclaim they ought to be” (Howard 1995, pp. 12f.),16 what are they? As I understand them, human rights are neither innate properties of human beings to which moral agents or also governments just respond to properly, e.g., by protecting them, nor are they part of the fabric of a moral reality existing regardless of what people think or do. Rather, human rights correspond to the socially negotiated meaning or appreciation of being human. They are not detected, but created. That is meant when we say that in the context of human rights our commitment to values comes from experiences and is not open to rational argumentation in the strict sense. What we can reasonably do, is exchanging different narratives, mindful that “value judgments point to histories” (Joas 2013, p. 178). They are no matter of truth, but rather plausibilities of existential stances. In this perspective, human rights no longer are guaranteed in ontological absolute terms of what is right and good, but on the contrary, appear as fragile manifestations of human choice and desire. Without the acceptance of their axiological-normative fundamentals, human rights cannot be ensured and their language is nothing but cloudy noise. Lacking a trans-subjective reality where they could be collated with, (prescriptive statements about) human rights are no bearers of truth value—on a correspondence-theory of truth basis—but (relatively) ‘true’—on a coherence-theory of truth basis—if they are supported by a respective framework of worldview. That is, however, not to say that different frame-
works of worldview are equally flawless. They can be criticized on the grounds of non-moral truth and logics. But the blade of rational critique is blunt when we get down to the fundamentals of moralities in terms of ultimate values and existential orientations.
If human rights norms are not representing moral truths but rather moral convictions, how can those who endorse them demand that others comply with them? The question as to the normative implications of moral relativism has been discussed fiercely ever since and I cannot go into the details here. But since this question is of eminent relevance for any non-cognitivist or relativist theory of human rights, it deserves an answer and mine follows. The ontological claim that there is no single true morality is principally neutral to normative outcomes except one: Whoever is convinced of the elusiveness of objective norms and values, cannot presume the position to own them. In dealing with others and their different opinions, fair-minded relativists are well-advised to follow the principle of reciprocity (cf. Frick 2013b). Whatever means in advertising their views they claim, relativists also have to concede to those holding dissenting views a principle legitimacy, since from an ethicalepistemological perspective they are pares inter pares. In that sense, relativists are not inhibited from assigning human rights (duties) to others as long as they are accepting that others do the same towards them with the same legitimacy. They might deny human rights claims we assign and vice versa and the outcome of such stalemate ultimately depends on a political decision temporarily settling the conflict. And yet, assigning and denying remain the fundamental modes of discursive negotiations that human rights always and inevitably are exposed to, and a risk no human rights catalog whatsoever could ever hold at bay thoroughly. Trying to save human rights from this fate would amount to reducing politics “to the declaration of truths already established elsewhere” (Koskenniemi 2011, p. 149), putting human rights at odds with popular sovereignty and human agency.
Human rights’ dynamics and open-endedness and above all their dependence on repeated affirmation, spring from this very condition and to a large extent explain the “politics of contestation” (Goodhart 2013; cf. also Mouffe 2014) surrounding human rights. Human rights are “inherently and unavoidably contestable because they inevitably and conspicu-
ously evoke counterclaims” (Sniderman et al. 1996, p. 78). The history of human rights itself attests to their essential contestedness. It tells us the somewhat uncomfortable, yet, grave lesson “that the rights we do have, legal, moral, and otherwise, are neither natural nor the gift of a supreme creator but are instead the result of individuals being afforded a certain kind of social recognition by a community of persons” (Barby 2009, p. 171). This remainder also puts into perspective the comfort some find in trusting in human rights law. In the end, human rights cannot be shielded from the fierce political and moral debates accompanying them ever since by any rhetoric of sempiternity and incontrovertible truth.
1.3 Primacy of Ethics Over Law
Whereas most agree that human rights have a double-nature in terms of a moral and a legal dimension, opinions are divided over the relation of these. Here, two general paradigms meet in the form of natural law theories and legal positivism. From a natural law point of view, human rights are valid independently from any judicial realization and political guarantees of protection. This view is inseparable from the modern rights of man (see esp. Tuck 1979). The Virginia Declaration of Rights declares “[t]hat all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity […]” (Fifth Virginia Convention 1776). The Declaration of Independence (DI) famously states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (Continental Congress 1776). In a similar vein the Déclaration des Droits de lʻHomme et du Citoyen (DDHC) praises “les droits naturels, inaliénables et sacrés de l’Homme” that are prescribed to any governmental power (National Convention 1789).
The natural law doctrine may have suffered substantial blows in the recent past, but it is still tied-up to human rights thought to a considerable degree. One just has to look at the concept of ius cogens, for instance (cf. UN 1969, Art. 53). It covers basic principles of modern international
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PART I. THE CELESTIAL SPHERE.
PART I. THE CELESTIAL SPHERE.
1. Definition of Astronomy. Astronomy has to do with the earth, sun, moon, planets, comets, meteors, stars, and nebulæ; in other words, with the universe, or “the aggregate of existing things.” It is the most ancient of all sciences. The derivation of the name from two Greek words, aster, “star,” and nomos, “law,” indicates its nature. It deals with the law of the stars—the word “star” being understood, in its widest signification, as including every heavenly body of whatever kind. The earth itself is such a body. Since we happen to live on the earth, it becomes our standpoint in space, from which we look out at the others. But, if we lived on some other planet, we would see the earth as a distant body in the sky, just as we now see Jupiter or Mars.
Astronomy teaches us that everything in the universe, from the sun and the moon to the most remote star or the most extraordinary nebula, is related to the earth. All are made of similar elementary substances and all obey similar physical laws. The same substance which is a solid upon the earth may be a gas or a vapour in the sun, but that does not alter its essential nature. Iron appears in the sun in the form of a hot vapour, but fundamentally it is the same substance which exists on the earth as a hard, tough, and heavy metal. Its different states depend upon the temperature to which it is subjected. The earth is a cool body, while the sun is an intensely hot
one; consequently iron is solid on the earth and vaporous in the sun, just as in winter water is solid ice on the surface of a pond and steamy vapour over the boiler in the kitchen. Even on the earth we can make iron liquid in a blast furnace, and with the still greater temperatures obtainable in a laboratory we can turn it into vapour, thus reducing it to something like the state in which it regularly exists in the sun.
This fact, that the entire universe is made up of similar substances, differing only in state according to the local circumstances affecting them, is the greatest thing that astronomy has to tell us. It may be regarded as the fundamental law of the stars.
2. The Situation of the Earth in the Heavens. One of the greatest triumphs of human intelligence is the discovery of the real place which the earth occupies in the universe. This discovery has been made in spite of the most deceptive appearances. If we accepted the sole evidence of our eyes, as men once did, we could only conclude that the earth was the centre of the universe. In the daytime we see the sun apparently moving through the sky from east to west, as if it were travelling in a circle round the earth, overhead by day and underfoot at night. In the night-time, we see the stars apparently travelling round the earth in the same way as the sun. The fact is, that all of them are virtually motionless with regard to the earth, and their apparent movements through the sky are produced by the earth's rotation on its axis. The earth turns round on itself once every twenty-four hours, like a spinning ball. Imagine a fly on a rotating school globe; the whole room would appear to the fly to be revolving round it as the heavens appear to revolve round the earth. It would have to be a very intelligent insect to correct the deceptive evidence of its eyes.
The actual facts, revealed by many centuries of observation and reasoning, are that the earth is a rotating globe, turning once on its axis every twenty-four hours and revolving once round the sun every three hundred and sixty-five days. The sun is also a globe, 1,300,000 times larger than the earth, but so hot that it glows with intense brilliance, while the substances of which it consists are kept
in a gaseous or vaporous state. Besides the earth there are seven other principal globes, or planets, which revolve round the sun, at various distances and in various periods, and, in addition to these, there are hundreds of smaller bodies, called asteroids or small planets. There are also many singular bodies called comets, and swarms of still smaller ones called meteors, which likewise revolve round the sun.
The earth and the other bodies of which we have just spoken are not only cooler than the sun, but most of them are in a solid state and do not shine with light of their own. The sun furnishes both heat and light to the smaller and cooler bodies revolving round it. In fact, the sun is simply a star, resembling the thousands of other stars which surround us in the sky, and its apparent superiority to them is due only to the fact that it is relatively near-by while they are far away. It is probable that all, or most, of the stars also have planets, comets, and meteors revolving round them, but invisible owing to their immense distance.
The “paths” in which the earth and the other planets and bodies travel in their revolutions round the sun are called their orbits. These orbits are all elliptical in shape, but those of the earth and the other large planets are not very different from circles. Some of the asteroids, and all of the comets, however, travel in elliptical orbits of considerable eccentricity, i. e., which differ markedly from circles. The orbit of the earth differs so slightly from a circle that the eccentricity amounts to only about one-sixtieth. The distance of the earth from the sun being, on the average, 93,000,000 miles, the eccentricity of its orbit causes it to approach to within about 91,500,000 miles in winter (of the northern hemisphere) and to recede to about 94,500,000 miles in summer. The point in its orbit where the earth is nearest the sun is called perihelion, and the point where it is farthest from the sun, aphelion. The earth is at perihelion about Jan. 1, and at aphelion about July 4.
Now, in order to make a general picture in the mind of the earth's situation, let the reader suppose himself to be placed out in space as far from the sun as from the other stars. Then, if he could see it, he would observe the earth as a little speck, shining like a mote in the
sunlight, and circling in its orbit close around the sun. The universe would appear to him to be somewhat like an immense spherical room filled with scattered electric-light bulbs, suspended above, below, and all around him, each of these bulbs representing a sun, and if there were minute insects flying around each light, these insects would represent the planets belonging to the various suns. One of the glowing bulbs among the multitude would stand for our sun, and one of the insects circling round it would be the earth.
Photograph of the South Polar Region of the Moon
Made by G W Ritchey with the forty-inch refractor of the Yerkes Observatory
We have already remarked that the rotation of the earth on its axis causes all the other heavenly bodies to appear to revolve round it once every twenty-four hours, and we must now add that the earth's revolution round the sun causes the same bodies to appear to make another, slower revolution round it once every year. This introduces a complication of apparent motions which it is the business of astronomy to deal with, and which we shall endeavour to explain.
3. The Horizon, the Zenith, and the Meridian. First, let us consider what is the ordinary appearance of the sky. When we go out of doors on a clear night we see the heavens in the shape of a great dome arched above us and filled with stars. What we thus see is one half of the spherical shell of the heavens which surrounds us on all sides, the earth being apparently placed at its centre. The other half is concealed from our sight behind, or below, the earth. This spherical shell, of which only one half is visible to us at a time, is called the celestial sphere. Now, the surface of the earth seems to us (for this is another of the deceptive appearances which astronomy has to correct) to be a vast flat expanse, whose level is broken by hills and mountains, and the visible half of the celestial sphere seems to bend down on all sides and to rest upon the earth in a circle which extends all around us. This circle, where the heavens and the earth appear to meet, is called the horizon. As we ordinarily see it, the horizon appears irregular and broken on account of the unevenness of the earth's surface, but if we are at sea, or in the midst of a great level prairie, the horizon appears as a smooth circle, everywhere equally distant from the eye. This circle is called the sensible horizon. But there is another, ideal, horizon, used in astronomy, which is called the rational horizon. It is of the utmost importance that we should clearly understand what is meant by the rational horizon, and for this purpose we must consider another fact concerning the dome of the sky.
We now turn our attention to the centre of that dome, which, of course, is the point directly overhead. This point, which is of primary importance, is called the zenith. The position of the zenith is indicated by the direction of a plumb-line. If we imagine a plumb-line to be suspended from the centre of the sky overhead, and to pass
into the earth at our feet, it would run through the centre of the earth, and, if it were continued onward in the same direction, it would, after emerging from the other side of the earth, reach the centre of the invisible half of the sky-dome at a point diametrically opposite to the zenith. This central point of the invisible half of the celestial sphere, lying under our feet, is called the nadir.
Keeping in mind the definitions of zenith and nadir that have just been given, we are in a position to understand what the rational horizon is. It is a great circle whose plane cuts through the centre of the earth, and which is situated exactly half-way between the zenith and the nadir. This plane is necessarily perpendicular, or at right angles, to the plumb-line joining the zenith and the nadir. In other words, the rational horizon divides the celestial sphere into two precisely equal halves, an upper and a lower half. In a hilly or mountainous country the sensible or visible horizon differs widely from the rational, or true horizon, but at sea the two are nearly identical. This arises from the fact, that the earth is so excessively small in comparison with the distances of most of the heavenly bodies that it may be regarded as a mere point in the midst of the celestial sphere.
1 The Rational and the Sensible Horizon
Let C be the earth's centre, O the place of the observer, and H D the rational horizon passing through the centre of the earth. For an object situated near the earth, as at A, the sensible horizon makes a large angle with the rational horizon. If the object is farther away, as at B, the angle becomes less; and still less, again, if the object is at D. It is evident that if the object be immensely distant, like a star, the sensible horizon O S will be practically parallel with the rational horizon, and will blend with it, because the radius, or semi-diameter, of the earth, O C, is virtually nothing in comparison with the distance of the star.
Fig
Besides the horizon and the zenith there is one other thing of fundamental importance which we must learn about before proceeding further,—the meridian. The meridian is an imaginary line, or semicircle, beginning at the north point on the horizon, running up through the zenith, and then curving down to the south point. It thus divides the visible sky into two exactly equal halves, an eastern and a western half. In the ordinary affairs of life we usually think only of that part of the meridian which extends from the zenith to the south point on the horizon (which is sometimes called the "noon-line” because the sun crosses it at noon), but in astronomy the northern half of the meridian is as important as the southern.
4. Altitude and Azimuth. Now, suppose that we wish to indicate the location of a star, or other object, in the sky. To do so, we must have some fixed basis of reference, and such a basis is furnished by the horizon and the zenith. If we tried to describe the position of a star, the most natural thing would be, first, to estimate, or measure, its height above the horizon, and, second, to indicate the direction in which it was situated with regard to the points of the compass. These two measures, if they were accurately made, would enable another person to find the star in the sky. And this is precisely what is done in astronomy. The height above the horizon is called altitude, and the bearing with reference to the points of the compass is called azimuth. Together these are known as co-ordinates. In order to systematise this method of measuring the location of a star, the astronomer uses imaginary circles drawn on the celestial sphere. The horizon and the meridian are two of these circles. In addition to these, other imaginary circles are drawn parallel to the horizon and becoming smaller and smaller until the uppermost one may run close round the zenith, which is the common centre of the entire set. These are called altitude circles, because each one throughout its whole extent is at an unvarying height, or altitude, above the horizon. Such circles may be drawn anywhere we please, so as to pass through any chosen star or stars. If two stars in different quarters of the sky are found to lie on the same circle, then we know that both have the same altitude.
Fig. 2. Altitude and Azimuth.
C is the place of the observer.
N C S, a north-and-south line drawn in the plane of the horizon
E C W, an east-and-west line in the plane of the horizon
N E S W, the circle of the horizon
Z, the observer's zenith
N Z S, vertically above N C S, the meridian
E Z W, the prime vertical
Z s s′, part of a vertical circle drawn through the star s
The circle through s parallel to the horizon is an altitude circle.
The angle s C s′, or the arc s′ s, represents the star's altitude.
The angle s C Z, or the arc Z s, is the star's zenith distance.
To find the azimuth, the angular distance round the horizon from S (0°), through W, N, E, to the point where the star's vertical circle meets the horizon, is measured. In this case it is 315°. But if we measured it eastward from the south point it would be 45°.
Then another set of circles is drawn perpendicular to the horizon, and all intersecting at the zenith and the nadir. These are called vertical circles, from the fact that they are upright to the horizon. That one of the vertical circles which cuts the horizon at the north-and-
south points coincides with the meridian, which we have already described. The vertical circle at right angles to the meridian is called the prime vertical. It cuts the horizon at the east and west points, dividing the visible sky into a northern and a southern half. Like the altitude circles, vertical circles may be drawn anywhere we please so as to pass through a star in any quarter of the sky—but the meridian and the prime vertical are fixed.
With the two sets of circles that have just been described, it is possible to indicate accurately the location of any heavenly body, at any particular moment. Its altitude is ascertained by measuring, along the vertical circle passing through it, its distance from the horizon. (Sometimes it is convenient to measure, instead of the altitude of a star, its zenith distance, which is also reckoned on the vertical circle.)
To ascertain the azimuth, we must first choose a point of beginning on the horizon. Any of the cardinal points, i.e., east, west, north, or south, may be employed for this purpose, but in astronomy it is customary to use only the south point, and to carry the measure westward all round the circle of the horizon, and so back to the point of beginning in the south. This involves circular, or degree, measure, to which a few words must now be devoted.
Every circle, no matter how large or how small, is divided into 360 equal parts, called degrees, usually indicated by the sign (°); each degree is subdivided into 60 equal parts called minutes, indicated by the sign (′); and each minute is subdivided into 60 equal parts called seconds, indicated by the sign (″). Thus there are 360°, or 21,600′, or 1,296,000″ in every complete circle. The actual length of a degree in inches, yards, or miles, depends upon the size of the circle, but no circle ever has more than 360°, and a degree of any particular circle is precisely equal to any other degree of that same circle. Thus, if a circle is 360 miles in circumference, every one of its degrees will be one mile long. In mathematics, a degree usually means not a distance measured along the circumference of a circle, but an angle formed at the centre of the circle between two lines called radii (radius in the singular), which lines, where they intersect the circumference, are separated by a distance equal to one 360th of the
entire circle. But, for ordinary purposes, it is simpler to think of a degree as an arc equal in length to one 360th of the circle. Now, since the horizon, and the other imaginary lines drawn in the sky, are all circles, it is evident that the principle of circular measure may be applied to them, and indeed must be so applied in order that they shall be of use to us in indicating the position of a star.
To return, then, to the measurement of the azimuth of a star. Since the south point is the place of beginning, we mark it 0°, and we divide the circle of the horizon into 360°, counting round westward. Suppose we see a star somewhere in the south-western quarter of the sky; then the point where the vertical circle passing through that star intersects the horizon will indicate its azimuth. Suppose that this point is found to be 25° west of south; then 25° will be the star's azimuth. Suppose it is 90°; then the azimuth is 90°, and the star must be on the prime vertical in the west, because west, being one quarter of the way round the horizon from south, is 90° in angular distance from the south point. Suppose the azimuth is 180°; then the star must be on the meridian north of the zenith, because north is exactly half-way, or 180° round the horizon from the south point. Suppose the azimuth is 270°; then the star must be on the prime vertical in the east, because east is 270°, or three quarters of the way round from the south point. If the star is on the meridian in the south its azimuth may be called either 0° or 360°, because on any graduated circle the mark indicating 360° coincides in position with 0°, that being at the same time the point of beginning and the point of ending.
The same system of angular measure is applied in ascertaining a star's altitude. Since the horizon is half-way between the zenith and the nadir it must be just 90° from either. If a star is in the zenith, then its altitude is 90°, and if it is below the zenith its altitude lies somewhere between 0° and 90°. In any case it cannot be less than 0° nor more than 90°. Having measured the altitude and the azimuth we have the two co-ordinates which are needed to indicate accurately the place of a star in the sky. But, as we shall see in a moment, other co-ordinates beside altitude and azimuth are needed for a complete description of the places of the stars on the celestial
sphere. Owing to the apparent revolution of the heavens round the earth, the altitudes and azimuths of the celestial bodies are continually changing. We shall now study the causes of these changes.
5. The Apparent Motion of the Heavens. We have likened the earth to a rotating school globe. As such a globe turns, any particular spot on it is presented in succession toward the various sides of the room. In precisely the same way any spot on the earth is turned by its rotation successively toward various parts of the surrounding sky. To understand the effect of this, a little patient watching of the actual heavens will be required, but this has the charm of all out-of-doors observation of nature, and it will be found of fascinating interest as the facts begin to unfold themselves.
The Moon Near the “Crater” Tycho
Photographed at the Lick Observatory under the direction of E. S. Holden.
Tycho is the regular oval depression a little below the centre of the view. The vast depression, 140 miles across, with a row of smaller craters within, below the centre of the view at the top, is Clavius. The photograph was made when sundown was approaching on that part of the moon. Observe the jagged line of advancing night lying across the rugged surface on the western (left-hand) side.
It is best to begin by finding the North Star, or pole star. If you are living not far from latitude 40° north, which is the median latitude of the United States, you must, after determining as closely as you can
the situation of the north point, look upward along the meridian in the north until your eyes are directed to a point about 40° above the horizon. Forty degrees is somewhat less than half-way from the horizon to the zenith, which, as we have seen, are separated by an arc of 90°. At that point you will notice a lone star of what astronomers call the second magnitude. This is the celebrated North Star. It is the most useful to man of all the stars, except the sun, and it differs from all the others in a way presently to be explained. But first it is essential that you should make no mistake in identifying it. There are certain landmarks in the sky which make such identification certain. In the first place, it is always so close to the meridian in the north, that by naked-eye observation you would probably never suspect that it was not exactly on the meridian. Then, its altitude is always equal, or very nearly equal, to the latitude of the place where you happen to be on the earth, so that if you know your latitude you know how high to carry your eye above the northern horizon. If you are in latitude 50°, the star will be at 50° altitude, and if your latitude is 30°, the altitude of the star will be 30°. Next you will notice that the North Star is situated at the end of the handle of a kind of dipper-shaped figure formed by stars, the handle being bent the wrong way. All of the stars forming this “dipper” are faint, except the two which are farthest from the North Star, in the outer edge of the bowl, one of which is about as bright as the North Star itself. Again, if you carry your eye along the handle to the bowl, and then continue onward about as much farther, you will be led to another, larger, more conspicuous, and more perfect, dipper-shaped figure, which is in the famous constellation of Ursa Major, or the Great Bear. This striking figure is called the Great Dipper (known in England as The Wain). It contains seven conspicuous stars, all of which, with one exception, are equal in brightness to the North Star. Now, look particularly at the two stars which indicate the outer side of the bowl of this dipper, and you will find that if you draw an imaginary line through them toward the meridian in the north, it will lead your eye directly back to the North Star. These two significant stars are often called The Pointers. With their aid you can make sure that you have really found the North Star.
