‘Perplexities of the rights of man’: Arendt on the aporias of human rights

Abstract

This article provides a new interpretation of Hannah Arendt’s critical analysis of the ‘perplexities of the Rights of Man’ by drawing attention to its overlooked methodological orientations, especially its ‘aporetic’ nature. Arendt’s critique is aporetic as it centres on the paradoxes of human rights and analyses them by putting into practice a mode of inquiry that she associates with Socrates. The article challenges the conventional understanding of aporia as a paralysing impasse and suggests that aporetic thinking can create possibilities of rethinking key concepts especially in times of crises. To make this point, I respond to Jacques Rancière’s criticism that the paradoxes introduced by Arendt paralyse thinking and doom human rights to an inevitable destiny of failure. I argue that, precisely because of its aporetic nature, Arendt’s critique attends to possibilities of rethinking and reinventing human rights, as can be seen in her articulation of ‘a right to have rights’.