Author Description

'Victims' Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights' addresses a set of critical topics that victims' stories of human rights abuse raise but that philosophers have thus far neglected: paradigms of victimhood and unjustifiable exclusions from the category of victim; narrative structures as constraints on victims' stories and as vehicles for articulating human rights norms; the role of emotional responses to victims' stories in discerning their normative significance; empathy with victims' stories as a pathway to moral understanding and human rights commitment; and the need for an ethical framework for obtaining victims' stories and for civil society institutions that can disseminate these stories for purposes of advancing human rights. Introduction -- Two victim paradigms and the problem of impure victims -- Narrative structures, narratives of abuse, and human rights -- Emotional understanding and victims' stories -- Empathy and the meanings of human rights in human lives -- The ethics and politics of putting victims' stories to work. Diana Tietjens Meyers. Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-252) and index.