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Human Rights, Emotion, And Critical Realism: Proposing An Emotional Ontology Of International Human Rights, Ben Luongo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes a critical realist framework of human rights and argues that emotion plays a foundational role in constituting a human rights ontology. I build this framework as a critical response to other IR human rights theories which have largely been developed in accordance with either empiricist or rationalist paradigms. Both empiricist and rationalist theories fail to articulate a firm ontological foundation which can support their human rights claims.

This ontological concern may not seem too important for human rights scholars interested in more substantive political issues, but it does lead to problems because no human rights theory is …