Human Rights as Placeholders

Abstract

Two prevailing “traditional” notions of human rights also cause the current skeptical mood concerning human rights. Either human rights are seen in a morally exaggerated way as “trump cards” in political negotiations, or they are pruned back to a purely juridical level, absorbed into legal instances that accord them at most the rank of constitutional rights. In contrast to this, the author defends a political conception of human rights that overcomes the problems besetting both conceptions, but without having to sacrifice their critical, normative content or a realistic role for human rights in international politics. A political conception of human rights assumes, the author argues firstly, that human rights grow out of concrete experiences of injustice and are the product of political struggles. Human rights are, secondly, placeholders for the public thematization of oppression, humiliation, marginalization, and despotism. A third characteristic feature of a political conception of human rights is that human rights raise claims to a rule system that permits access to the freedoms and resources formulated by human rights. And finally, the obligations imposed by human rights are not duties of assistance but institutional duties to realize the conditions for exercising human rights. Human rights, the author concludes, can be “used” by any person to criticize existing ordering structures and can be activated for political purposes directed to the common good.