A Critical Theory of Human Rights—Some Groundwork

Abstract

Human rights are a complex phenomenon, comprising an array of different aspects: moral, legal, political, and social. A philosophical account of human rights must integrate each of these aspects in the right way. In this chapter, Forst sketches a critical theory of human rights as an alternative to mainstream accounts. His own account begins from the oft- neglected social aspect—the perspective of participants in social struggles against exploitation and oppression—and seeks to reconstruct the basic emancipatory claim of human rights. Human rights, Forst argues, have a common ground in one basic moral right, the right to justification, and their legal and political function is to make this right socially effective.