The Lasting Debate on Human Rights

Abstract

This chapter examines the subject of human rights from diverse perspectives. Over the previous decades, this issue has increasingly become the subject of debate and even controversy for various reasons. Though not mentioned explicitly, the idea of human rights dates back to the Declaration of Independence of the United States (1776) and the Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen) (1789) of the French Revolution. Though the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted in 1948, was to a certain degree inspired by the original American and French Declarations it transcends their context, among other things, by claiming universal validity and for the legitimation given to human rights. As regards content, however, there are certain similarities between the nature of the UDHR and the original American and French Declarations. Most prominently, both pre-eminently assume the so-called negative notion of freedom, implying certain rights as against the authorities. Another common characteristic concerns the rights of individuals being emphasized, those of collectivities getting less attention. In the non-Western world, these positions are challenged and at least considered one-sided. In this connection, it is particularly argued that social and economic rights, involving collectivities, should get proper attention. This position implies a positive notion of freedom, that is, a freedom ‘to’, instead of a negative freedom ‘from’. These conflicting notions of freedom reflect the underlying philosophical principles involved in the debates on human rights. It is argued that the notion of human rights will remain an essentially contested concept as explained by W.B. Gallie. The latter maintains that, in spite of being contested, the concepts concerned have the feature of implying a commonly accepted tradition. It is this feature, however, that is lacking with the issue of human rights, it actually being under debate. In this connection, it is argued that the construction of a commonly accepted tradition is called for, implying the global historical development of the previous decades, in this way giving a new historical dimension to the essentially contested concept of human rights.