THE IDEA OF RIGHTS: A GLOBAL COMPARATIVE APPROACH (original) (raw)

Philosophical dimensions of human rights : some contemporary views

2012

List of contributors.- Acknowledgments.- Introduction Claudio Corradetti.- PART I Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Human Rights.- Chapter I Human Rights in History and Contemporary Practice: Source Materials for Philosophy Jeffrey Flynn.- Chapter II Philosophy and Human Rights: Contemporary Perspectives David Reidy.- Chapter III Reconsidering Realism on Rights William E. Scheuerman.- PART II The Validit-(ies) of Human Rights.- Chapter IV The Concept of Human Dignity and the Realistic Utopia of Human Rights Jurgen Habermas.- Chapter V The Justification of Human Rights and the Basic Right to Justification. A Reflexive Approach Rainer Forst.- Chapter VI Social Harm, Political Judgment, and the Pragmatics of Justification Albena Azmanova.- Chapter VII "It All Depends": The Universal and the Contingent in Human Rights Wojciech Sadurski.- Chapter VIII Tiny Sparks of Contingency. On the Aesthetics of Human Rights Giovanna Borradori.- Chapter IX The Idea of a Charter o...

On the definition, Content, and Essence of the Term “human rights”

Krytyka Prawa, 2022

The ambiguity of understanding and use of the term "human rights" reduces the effectiveness of the law-making and law enforcement activities of state and international bodies, creates negative conditions for the formation of the unified worldview and legal position of future lawyers and representatives of other humanities. This article aims to define, formulate the content and describe the legal essence of the term "human rights," and to substantiate the thesis about the harmfulness of the legal science, law-making and law enforcement use of this term with different meanings. The leading method of research is the method of analysis, which allows one to study the subject, imaginatively dividing it into constituent elements, and to consider each of the selected elements separately within a single whole. This article presents the argumentation of the need for a single wording, understand

DIFFICULTIES OF INTERPRETING THE CONCEPT OF "HUMAN RIGHTS": A LOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECT

DIFFICULTIES OF INTERPRETING THE CONCEPT OF "HUMAN RIGHTS": A LOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECT, 2024

B a c k g r o u n d . The article examines the concept of human rights. This concept in modern philosophical discourse is both vague and imprecise. Although most authors recognize the lack of unanimity in the definition of the concept of human rights, few have tried to find out the reasons for this situation. The purpose of this study is to identify the sources of the problematic definition of the concept of human rights by means of a logical analysis of the concept and to propose ways to overcome the identified difficulties in the interpretation of this concept. M e t h o d s . A philosophical hermeneutic approach combined with a comparative and terminological analysis of the concept of human rights was used in the study. R e s u l t s . Human rights discourse is fundamentally open: it is normatively undetermined, and anyone can join it. It is therefore inevitably polyphonic and multilingual. As a result, this discourse contains very different understandings of the most important thing: what human rights really are. Efforts to find a universal definition of the concept of human rights seem to be an attempt to unite under one roof things that are poorly or not at all combined: different ontological understandings, different scopes of the concept, and different logical characteristics. C o n c l u s i o n s . The difficulty of logical analysis of the concept of human rights, i.e. its assignment to a specific type, and its unambiguous interpretation and definition, is related to: 1) the lack of definition of the limits of scope of the concept of human rights in philosophical discourse and the insufficient definition of the limits of this concept as a legal notion; 2) the need to assess the legitimacy of the retrospective extrapolation of the term ‘human rights' to the entire body of works created before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which it was not used (in the Ukrainian context, this aspect is not obvious due to historical and linguistic peculiarities); 3) different ontological understanding of human rights by different actors in the discourse that makes it impossible to combine their positions under the same umbrella (e.g. according to one position, human rights are seen as anthropological attributes of a person; according to another, they are norms regulating social relations). The above testifies to the complexity of an unambiguous logical characteristic of the analyzed concept. It seems that thе situation does not allow for a single definition of the concept of "human rights". It is assumed that it is not a single concept, but a plurality of concepts. In this case, the position of the discourse participant in relation to a certain system of criteria and its justification may be a way to overcome the difficulties we have identified.

HUMAN RIGHTS: A JURISPRUDENTIAL ANALYSIS OF THEORIES AND CONCEPTIONS

This paper examined the different and conflicting rights and discusse theoretical conflicts are the result of diverse perspectives in outlook regarding religion, ideology, culture, gender, race, and so on, this paper analytically conside of attempting a reconciliatory approach is based on conflic however, were properly delineated role the respect and protection of human right should play in a human society. The methodology employed is critical analysis.

THE GENESIS OF THE CONCEPT OF UNIVERSAL RIGHTS IN THE MODERN ERA

2020

This review paper investigates the philosophical cum political genesis of the concept of universal rights in the modern era through the examination of the conceptualization of the universal rights in de Vitoria, Grotius, Hobbes, Locke. The main goal is to explain to what extent their conceptions of universal rights are biased by their society of origin and particular interests at stake (in this case, those of the Euro-peans). That is the reason why, the supposed contribution of this paper is to understand how the current conceptualization of rights carries the legacy of these asymmetric features and, accordingly, to reshape the current conceptualization of (human) rights in order to make them truly universal and, thus, detachable from any particular philosophical traditions and local ethical views.

HUMAN RIGHTS FROM AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW POINT

The historical progression of the idea of 'Rights' and 'Citizenship' are embedded in a narrative, which postures itself as a Universalist in nature. The role of 'State' in such a narrative account cannot be over-stressed. The concept of 'Rights' in such a context comes across as an act of dispensation. Dispensation of 'Justice', such an account and its discussion problematises the almost universally accepted notions regarding 'Human Rights'. In order to do so, some of the major epistemological shifts are identified to analyze the 'accepted' continuum of human thought and behaviour which are universal in nature. It would be useful here to question the 'universal' tenor of this kind of exercise in modern social science theories where nature has been 'pushed' in to the periphery. The MDG envisioned, must overcome this academic and practical resistance to identify the crux of international relation.

The elements of theory of human right I. The Need for a Theory

Few concepts are as frequently invoked in contemporary political discussions as human rights. There is something deeply attractive in the idea that every person anywhere in the world, irrespective of citizenship or territorial legislation, has some basic rights, which others should respect.At the same time, the central idea of human rights as something that people have, and have even without any specific legislation, is seen by many as foundationally dubious and lacking in cogency. A recurrent question is, Where do these rights come from? It is not usually disputed that the invoking of human rights can be politically powerful. Many philosophers and legal theorists see the rhetoric of human rights as just loose talk—perhaps kindly and well meaning forms of locution—but loose talk nevertheless. The contrast between the widespread use of the idea of human rights and the intellectual skepticism about its conceptual soundness is not new.Bentham insisted that " natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights (an American phrase),rhetoricalnonsense, nonsense up on stilts. " That suspicionremains very alive today, and despite persistent use of the ideaof human rights in practical affairs, there are many who see the idea ofhuman rights as no more than " bawling upon paper, " to use another Bentham's barbed portrayals of natural right claims.The dismissal of human rights is often comprehensive and is aimed against any belief in the existence of rights that people can have unconditionally,simply by virtue of their humanity (rather than having them contingently, on the basis of specific qualifications, such as citizenshipor legal entitlements).It is critically important to see the relationship between the force and appeal of human rights, on the one hand, and their reasoned justification and scrutinized use, on the other. There is, thus, need for some theory and also for some defense of any proposed theory. The object of this article is to do just that, and to consider, in that context, the justification of the general idea of human rights and also of the includability of economic and social rights within the broad class of human rights.

Towards a Philosophy of Human Rights

Current Legal Problems, 2012

Two important trends are discernible in the contemporary philosophy of human rights. According to foundationalism, human rights have importantly distinctive normative grounds as compared with other moral norms. An extreme version of foundationalism claims that human interests do not figure among the grounds of human rights; a more moderate version restricts the human interests that can ground human rights to a subset of that general class, eg basic needs or our interest in freedom. According to functionalism, it belongs to the essence of human rights that they play a certain political role or combination of such roles, eg operating as benchmarks for the legitimacy of states or triggers for intervention against states that violate them. This article presents a view of human rights that opposes both the foundationalist and the functionalist trends. Against foundationalism, it is argued that a plurality of normative values ground human rights; these values include not only the equal moral status of all human beings but also potentially all universal human interests. Against functionalism, it is argued that human rights are moral standards-moral rights possessed by all human beings simply in virtue of their humanity-that may perform a plurality of political functions, but that none of these functions is definitive of their nature as human rights. The ensuing, doubly pluralistic, account of human rights is one that, it is claimed, both makes best sense of the contemporary human rights culture and reveals the strong continuities between that culture and the natural rights tradition.