The Speeches and Paradoxes of Human Rights (original) (raw)
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Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d’histoire du droit international
Studies on the nature of human rights have reached an impasse largely due to a general resistance to engage with the continuity of ideas and theories drawn from religion, morality and ethics in the history of international law. With the impasse of human rights, the article refers to an epistemological deadlock about what human rights are. Studying the concept of natural rights, it is argued, offers a means of breaking this impasse and, ultimately, easing the current tension between historicism and essentialism in human rights theory. The article concludes that natural rights were means to decide the moral questions posed by the violent redistribution of (material) goods taken to be common by the theoreticians of the expanding European empires. Probing in this manner into natural rights’ early uses and embedded theories gives us new tools and fresh approaches to be employed in relation to the challenges posed by contemporary global politics.
CHAPTER 1 THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF RIGHTS
International Human Rights, Social Policy and Global Development: Critical Perspectives., 2020
This chapter discusses the historical development of ‘rights’ and how these transformed into ideas about ‘universal human rights’. It shows how the concept of rights developed historically from notions of legal through to political, social/economic and cultural rights and from individual to group rights. It describes how thinking about rights has developed from identifying rights solely with clans, tribes, communities, ethnic groups and then nation states, to linking them to all humanity - including minorities - through concepts of universal human rights. It recognises the contribution of philosophical ideas about humanity, equality, democracy and social justice, as well as the impact of human agency on the development of a range of rights, and argues that such developments do not take place in a vacuum (Donnelly, 2013: 75-92). Social, economic, ideological, cultural and geo-political influences engender our power to change society and ensure that human rights are a contested site. Rights are contested in their conceptualisation and in the development of oversight mechanisms. They are also contested in their implementation, enforceability and realisability on the ground (Freeman, 2017). In essence, it is argued that humans make human rights. As Karl Marx (1851-52) wrote in The Eighteenth Brumaire: ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’ (Marx, 1851: 103).
THE IDEA OF RIGHTS: A GLOBAL COMPARATIVE APPROACH
European Journal of Research Development and Sustainability (EJRDS)
Rights have become, in late years, a critical worry of legitimate scholars, just as of those engaged with the good and political way of thinking. This new article looks to push various discussions ahead by building up examining rights and centering upon more broad hypothetical contemplations identifying with rights. That separates into five sections. The first incorporates clarification of the part played by applied investigation inside statute, while the second directs a reevaluation of the examination of rights. This part manages the contentions progressed by various scholars. The third part contains the creator's structure for talking about rights, including models drawn from misdeed, established law, and global law, along with examining Unger's hypothesis of rights. This research article also focuses on the apparent struggle between the safeguards of a rights approach and the boss of utilitarianism and infers that neither arrangement with worries of profound quality on which based their hypotheses. The fifth part comprises an end which thinks about subjects and thinks about the job of rights inside the overall assumption. For understudies, accommodating highlights of the papers are the unmistakable thought of jurisprudential strategy and the chance to analyze various scholars connected by their different perspectives regarding rights.
A Discussion on Natural Rights
have contributed heavily to the idea of the natural state of humanity in various forms. From the conception of Hobbesian 'state of nature, to 'natural' rights, political theory has been enriched by the progression of these ideas to explain not only human interaction through the prism of politics but also the structure that made these interactions possible.
Human Rights Evolution: From Natural Rights to Postmodernism
Also Published in PLD 2015 Journal 76. The discussion will start with general introduction of rights in a politico-legal system from where a historical string of different philosophical approaches to inherent natural rights of men will be traced. Thereafter emergence of Human Rights as a result of atrocities committed in the Second World War will be analyzed ending on the postmodern panoramic view of the reality and Human Rights.
1988
A glance at history shows that the progressive development of human rights has been considerably conditioned by the evolution of social relations, and the forms in which these relations were institutionalized. It was not in abstract that newly recognised human rights came to be defined, but in the context of the modern state and that of an industrial and technological civilization; in the context of the bitter experience of two World Wars and the social and political evolution after 1945. This evolution has been characterized by a process of decolonialisation, by a growing sense of solidarity among mankind, and by a widespread awareness of the delicate ecological balance of our one and only Earth which is limited in its natural resources. The remarkable thing about the evolution of human rights is that it appears to have followed in a given direction. In fact, we notice the widening of the concept of human rights which had originated in the eighteenth century. Throughout the whole d...
Human Rights: Historical Retrospection & Conceptual Foundations
IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2013
As human civilization grew, a need arose to develop certain institutions & organizations, the most important & latest of which was the state itself. Primarily this institution was concerned with administration of Justice & defence. Now for this administration of justice & defence, the state needed to empower certain people so as to legitimize their work. However more often than not the power conferred came to be abused proving the dictum right that power corrupts & absolute power corrupts absolutely. The State instead of being a protector became an oppressor. The dominating philosophy of Positive Law furthered the dictatorship, which came to be practiced by the regimes like the Nazi in Germany. Such regimes thriving on the philosophy that law is what is made, irrespective of its goodness or badness & completely ignoring the concept of what law "ought" to be, made things worse for the ruled. In this way self-styled autocratic rules came to be formed & promulgated, not for the benefit of the governed but the vested interests of the governing. The failure of these machinations led people to look for an alternative but found no options & started to look to heavens for help & this led to the revival of Natural Law Philosophy. As per this philosophy the Natural law being the supreme law wants every positive law to be subservient to the Cosmic order. Rousseau, a Naturalist in his treatise On the Social Contract in 1762, had observed & very rightly so, "The man is born free but everywhere he is in chains" The Natural law philosophy aimed at preservation of peace & establishment of order solely by relying on morals, ethics & reasoning. This was an immediate cure to the tyrannical enactments & draconian laws of the autocrats. But even the Natural Law failed as well beyond a certain point. The chief argument about its insufficiency was that it was an abstract idea & at times favored the ruler & at times the ruled. As a result a need was felt to have some other device to rescue the abuse & misuse of power by the state. The development gave birth to what we call Human Rights Jurisprudence. The Human Rights Jurisprudence has helped the establishment of legal regimes at the International, National as well as State levels. The need necessitated mankind to make endeavors in this direction so that the sacred humanness is preserved & protected much to the stability of world order.