Two problems surrounding the universality of human rights (original) (raw)

This thesis marks the end of an academic and personal period that I chose to undertake in the hope of gaining a better understanding of our world, or at least the tools for such an understanding. And, just as in the world we inhabit, it has been marked and determined by the unexpected, life and death, joy, uncertainty and failure on occasions, and, more than anything else, the help and kindness of others. I would not have been able to enter this program without the full tuition exemption I was generously granted by the Department of Philosophy. I too enjoyed an achievement stipend for two semesters. I am grateful for this opportunity, and for the willingness to help in all matters I have always encountered from all members of this department. Among them, I wish to heartily thank my supervisor, Siobhan Kattago, for teaching me these years through her academic and personal example, establishing a truly enriching intellectual relationship with me where I felt the freedom to pursue my ideas with rigour, and an essential touch of the wisdom usually known as common sense. My ideas and personal way of addressing them benefitted from discussions with many friends and colleagues, among them Merily Salura, Mirt Kruusmaa, Francisco Martínez and Semyon Reshenin. The incisive work of Karel Pajus as my opponent in 1 These General Comments published by the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights contain an ample body of comments declared by the same office to be "authoritative interpretations of the relevant treaty provisions" to each of the human rights treaties approved by the United Nations.