Natural rights

Abstract

Editor's Note: One of the missions of the Journal of Human Rights is to foster interdisciplinary understanding of human rights. In recent years, scholars have shown a renewed interest in the relationship between psychoanalysis and human rights. In this issue, we present an article by Simon Clarke which examines psychoanalytic dimensions of human rights. They are prefaced by this short piece by Lewis S. Feuer which is reprinted from the Handbook on Human Rights , published by the Academy of Human Rights in Zurich from 1956 to 1962. This essay appeared as 'Number 9' in the series in 1961. Professor Feuer, University Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, was a pioneer in the psychoanalytic study of social and philosophical issues and felt that psychoanalysis, with its focus on understanding human strivings for happiness, had much to offer the study of human rights. This essay contains the kernels of a theory of human rights (which appear in more detailed form in his classic work, Psychoanalysis and Ethics (Feuer 1955)), which argues that natural rights are the articulation and externalization of unconscious and repressed human aspirations. The strength of this essay lies in its argument that natural rights are both universal and relative at the same time. That is, there will always be expressions of desires and aspirations in the form of the language of rights, but the particular times and places in which such desires are expressed decisively influence the language of rights that emerges. Thus, we can examine rights as historically and socially contingent products, but which reflect universal aspirations for freedom, autonomy and self-actualization. The essay is, thus, a contribution to both the philosophy and sociology of human rights. With the republication of this essay, the Journal of Human Rights begins a tradition of reprinting classic essays on human rights in the hope that they will generate discussion and debate about current issues and problems.