The traditional logic of human rights and the subject/object dichotomy

Abstract

The chapter demonstrates how the subject/object dichotomy depicted in the previous chapter informs the contemporary international human rights system. The analysis first demonstrates that contemporary human rights scholarship recognizes dynamics of objectification mainly through discussion of hierarchies of subjecthood present in human rights law and attempts to wrestle with this harmful tendency of human rights law. The chapter goes a step further and brings to the surface the less visible counterpart of the human rights subject, namely the object of human rights. It does so by discussing the ways of recognizing objectification tendencies in human rights law as well as historical roots of objectification in the development of the idea of rights, including natural rights. Through this discussion the chapter reveals the mechanism inscribed in the Western idea of rights constituted by a peculiar vision of and combination between the concepts of freedom, property, and rights that enables objectification of human beings, including self-objectification. The operation of this objectification mechanism through the history of Western rights theories is discussed using the example of slavery in Aristotle, Grotius and Kant. The operation of the same mechanism in contemporary human rights law is illustrated using the example of migrants and refugees.