Philosophical Foundations Of Human Rights Research Articles

Intersecting Visions of Justice: The Philosophical Tapestry of Human Rights and Human Nature in the Thoughts of Macintyre, Arendt, Nino, and Habermas

This study explores the philosophical foundations of human rights concerning freedom, equality, and solidarity through the lenses of Iusnaturalism, Iuspositivism, and Ethical Constructivism, with a special focus on Alasdair MacIntyre, Hanna Arendt, Carlos Santiago Nino, and Jürgen Habermas. It examines MacIntyre’s revision of Iusnaturalism with an Aristotelian approach, Arendt’s methodological Iuspositivism highlighting legal frameworks, Nino’s rationality-based human rights theory, and Habermas’ emphasis on communicative action and social constructs. This research navigates the dynamic interplay of these theories, offering a multi-dimensional perspective on the evolution, validation, and application of human rights in contemporary society. Significantly, it introduces a dialectical perspective on rationality as a dynamic and evolving human attribute, addressing the constructivist necessities in defining human nature amidst prevailing uncertainties.

Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights According to Soren Kierkegaard

Philosophical foundations of human rights as envisioned by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, a pivotal figure in existentialist philosophy, presents a unique perspective on human rights that investigates into the individual’s subjective experience and moral responsibility. His ideas emphasize the significance of human agency, freedom, and the ethical imperative of choosing one’s values and actions authentically. This article provides an overview of Kierkegaard’s key concepts, such as the individual’s relation to God, the concept of authenticity, and the ethical life, and their implications for the understanding of human rights. It delves into Kierkegaard’s existentialist perspective and its implications for our understanding of human rights, highlighting the importance of individuality, freedom, and moral responsibility in his philosophical framework. It also highlights the potential contributions of Kierkegaard’s philosophy to contemporary discussions surrounding the nature and justification of human rights.

Towards a philosophical foundation of human rights in contemporaneity

Using bibliographical review and analysis, this article seeks to elaborate upon the philosophical foundations of Human Rights. In order to do so, we conducted a research regarding the jusnaturalist, positivist, moralist and negationist schools in order to present aspects of converging 'concentric circles'. This structure enables the possibility of a shared philosophical foundation of Human Rights instead of multiple theoretical misconceptions emerging from each theory read individually. There is therefore a lesser risk of leading such theories and their interpretations into anachronism and stasis.

LECTURAS DE “EL DERECHO A TENER DERECHOS” DE HANNAH ARENDT A LA LUZ DE “EL DERECHO HUMANO A LA PAZ”

El fundamento filosófico de los derechos humanos se ha hecho más explícito, dado que el presupuesto de la paz en el Preámbulo de la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos exigió un desarrollo de mayor profundidad, tanto en su definición como en las condiciones o requerimientos para su cumplimiento. A partir de la discusión acerca del derecho humano a la paz nos proponemos reinterpretar la expresión arendtiana el derecho a tener derechos como la fórmula filosófica que reclama el ascenso de la paz a su enunciación jurídica; se sustenta esto en la crítica a los Derechos del Hombre, en la valoración de la singularización humana y en la apuesta al encuentro de acciones y discursos que caracterizan la política de Hannah Arendt.

The Phenomenon of Human Rights from the Perspective of Islam and the West

The phenomenon of human rights, in its contemporary sense, is not even ancient in Western thought, and it came from the context of a social and political movement in France, and the most important of the fundamental rights that collected under this title is the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to equality, the right to asylum, the right to freedom of expression, the right to freedom of opinion and religion, women's rights, the right to participate in social and political life, and the right to personal property. It is an established principle that the first condition for the exercise of these rights is their incompatibility with the rights of other human beings and their human rights. The philosophical basis of human rights in the West consists of three important principles: the principle of human dignity, equality and justice. But the difference between human rights in the West and Islam is that "God" is at the center of the Islamic worldview, while in the Western world the "man" is the central one, and man is the measure of all rights. A clearer interpretation of the two types of "God-centered" or "human-centered" ideas in the West is the predominance of human-centeredness and in Islam the predominance of God-centeredness. The philosophical foundations of human rights in Islam are the principle of human dignity, the principle of God-seeking, the principle of human immortality, and the principle of its developmental relation to the set of being.

Pease Based on Human Rights: XXVIII World Congress on Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy

The article is an overview of the XXVIII World Congress on Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, held in the summer of 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal. The general theme of the Congress – “Peace Based on Human Rights” – raises fundamental questions about the correlation of the two basic modern values – peace and human rights. They are necessary conditions for the existence of human and humanity, but are in danger: we strive for peace, but it is not genuine if it is not based on human rights. The author of the article focuses on the plenary lectures of the Congress participants, who considered the relationship between peace and human rights from different points of view. Plenary speakers pay attention to such contexts of the problem as moral and legal rights, international criminal justice, the notion of war and peace in the context of transnational terrorism, human security, the right to resist, the concept of law and legal revolution, nationalism and state sovereignty, cosmopolitan theories of perpetual peace, refugees, justice and solidarity, the political and philosophical foundations of human rights, and some other pressing issues of contemporary philosophy of law.

Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, edited by R. Cruft, S. M. Liao, and M. Renzo

Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, edited by R. Cruft, S. M. Liao, and M. Renzo

El Agnosticismo Pedagógico de la Educación Andragógica de los Derechos Humanos

La presente investigación está circunscrita bajo un enfoque epistemológico interpretativo, orientado a la comprensión conceptual de los derechos humanos desde la perspectiva crítica del porqué del agnosticismo pedagógico en la educación andragógica. Tiene como objetivo general, analizar la evolución histórica de los derechos humanos en la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, con el propósito de conocer el porqué del agnosticismo pedagógico de los derechos humanos en la ciudadanía. Para ello se realizó una revisión bibliográfica de las bases filosóficas de los derechos humanos, la evolución filosófica de las constituciones existentes en el país, desde la época denominada transición a la democracia, se indagar la fundamentación teórica y filosófica de los derechos humanos en Venezuela, como axioma formativo para la gnoseología andragógica. Como conclusión, se da a conocer el porqué del agnosticismo pedagógico de la educación andragógica de los derechos humanos.

The Hierarchy of Human Rights and the Transcendental System of Right

This paper analyses the relatively neglected topic of hierarchy in the philosophical foundation of human rights. It develops a transcendental-discursive approach. This approach develops the idea that all human rights could be derived from a small set of fundamental rights that are interconnected and that incorporate all ulterior possible specific rights. This set is then applied to an analysis of human rights as they have been formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The claim is that this prior set of transcendental rights is discursively implied whenever we talk about human rights. Thinking about the hierarchy of rights pragmatically means thinking about prioritising their implementation. Some consequences for practical philosophy and politics concerning the role of states, enterprises and world citizenship are then discussed.

Towards a More Particularist View of Rights\u2019 Stringency

For all their various disagreements, one point upon which rights theorists often agree is that it is simply part of the nature of rights that they tend to override, outweigh or exclude competing considerations in moral reasoning, that they have ‘peremptory force’ (Raz in The Morality of Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1986, p. 192), making ‘powerful demands’ that can only be overridden in ‘exceptional circumstances’ (Miller, in Cruft, Liao, Renzo (eds), Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016, p. 240). In this article I challenge this thought. My aim here is not to prove that the traditional view of rights’ stringency is necessarily false, nor even that we have no good reason to believe it is true. Rather, my aim is only to show that we have good reason to think that the foundation of the traditional position is less stable than we might have otherwise supposed and that an alternative conception of rights—one which takes the stringency of any given right as particular to the kind of right it is—is both viable and attractive. In short, to begin to move us towards a more ‘particularist’ conception of rights’ standing in moral reasoning and judgement.

Philosophical foundations of human rights: the Yoruba example

Some foundations have been provided for the social validity of human rights in Western philosophical literature. Some African scholars have also sought to ground the notion of human rights within the traditional African cultural beliefs and practices. There is, however, a dearth in literature on the Yoruba notion of human rights. Perhaps this may be due to scholars’ attitude that any talk about human rights is incompatible with the communalistic social structure of the Yoruba. The present paper challenges this prevalent attitude by providing some philosophical foundations for human rights within the limits permitted by the Yoruba world-view. The paper attempts a theoretical reconciliation between the Yoruba claim to communitarianism and the possibility of human rights. The paper concludes that, in spite of the seemingly antinomic relation they bear to each other, the idea of human rights is neither practically meaningless/unintelligible in a communitarian society, nor is it conceptually incompatible with the communitarian ideology.Keywords: Philosophical foundations, Human, Rights, Communitarianism, Yoruba

Book Review: Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights

Book Review: Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights

Democratic Legitimacy of International Human Rights Law: A Reply to Professor Rubenfeld

This article is a review of Professor Jed Rubenfeld’s article Unilateralism and Constitutionalism. The author deals with Rubenfeld's contention that human rights law is deeply undemocratic to the extent that they are sought to be universally validated. Is this argument tenable and if so, is universality of human rights a legal fiction? In answering these issues the author discusses several philosophical foundations of human rights.

Foundations of Human Rights: Metaphysics, Essentialism, and Intuitionism

AbstractThis article addresses the philosophical foundations of human rights without recourse to religion or metaphysics. It begins with the requirements of a non-religious theory of human rights and then discusses Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach. Because her account relies on intuition to play a major role, this article compares two intuitionists, Johannes Morsink and David Little, whose works address the moral intuitionism of those who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as well as the foundations of human rights more generally. It argues that Little's rational intuitionism represents the best possible intuitionist defense of human rights, yet there are important questions of moral growth and attention to context it must answer going forward.

Introduction: Global Human Rights Law and the Boundaries of Statehood

Whatever the true historical origins and philosophical foundations of human rights—questions to which the contributors to this collection of essays give different answers—their protection has taken a distinctive form in the modern state legal order and, by extension, in the state-centered conception of international law. Arguing from a historical perspective, Samuel Moyn contends that, from American and French Declarations of the “Rights of Man” to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the main purpose of human rights was to organize and legitimize the social compact between the state and its citizens.1 If, in the course of the eighteenth century revolutions, the “rights of man” were proclaimed as universal principles to which positive law was supposed to conform, these rights “only appeared through the state, and there was no forum above it, or at times even in it, in which to indict the state’s transgression.”2 Human rights retained their state-centered focus with their appearance on the international stage after World War II, now in the form of international declarations and covenants established by and for independent states endowed with sovereign equality and national collective self-determination.3 The global expansion of human rights in this period thus reaffirmed, rather than undermined, the central role of the state in their creation, interpretation, and enforcement. As Marti Koskenniemi says, “[b]y establishing and consenting to human rights limitations on their own

El reconocimiento como presupuesto discursivo para una concepción pluriversalista de derechos humanos

<p>En este artículo se analizan los fundamentos filosóficos de la doctrina de los derechos humanos a partir de la Teoría Crítica del Reconocimiento. En un primer momento, se recordarán los orígenes de los conceptos de persona humana y dignidad humana, según las contribuciones de la tradición judaico-cristiana, buscando demostrar la vinculación entre la concepción de derechos humanos y una tradición cultural específica. Posteriormente, intentamos introducir la propuesta teórica de reinterpretación de los derechos humanos con base en postulados discursivos, antes postulados normativos, con fines de aproximar las partes implicadas en el discurso de acuerdo con las tradiciones culturales y demás vínculos capaces de producir relaciones de reconocimiento. Finalmente, se analiza cómo la Teoría del Reconocimiento puede colaborar para una redefinición epistemológica de la categoría de los derechos humanos.</p>

A fundamentação moral dos direitos humanos

O objetivo deste trabalho é examinar a gramática moral kantiana e sua relação com a noção contemporânea de direitos humanos. Parte da hipótese de que a reflexão ética contemporânea sobre os fundamentos filosóficos dos direitos humanos está ainda na "clausura da moral" instaurada pelo "paradigma kantiano da razão prática". Na sequência, sustenta que a perspectiva de avaliação moral dos princípios norteadores dos direitos humanos segue, em grande medida, os determinados pelo pensamento crítico kantiano. Conclui formulando perspectivas de investigação e admitindo a importância de sua continuidade para a fundamentação filosófica dos direitos humanos.

Empowering the Invisible: Women, Local Culture and Global Human Rights Protection

This paper examines the problems that various contemporary human rights discourses face with relativism, with special reference to the global protection of women’s rights. These problems are set within the theoretical debate between the Western liberal individualism on the one hand, and African, Asian and Islamic collectivist communitarianism on the other. Instead of trying to prove the superiority of one theoretical approach over the other, the purpose here is to point out some of the most common logical fallacies and cultural biases that have led to false polarizations between the various theoretical foundations of human rights discourse. The paper highlights these errors and inaccuracies with a view to diminishing the dichotomies between the various philosophical foundations of human rights, particularly in connection to the promotion of women’s rights. This is done in order to pave the way for more open and impartial political, cultural and gender dialogue in the promotion of human rights both in theory and in practice.

Against Superciliousness

■ This text will analyze the commonly accepted philosophical foundation of human rights, the international system of protection of human rights and selected perspectives of activists. It argues that dominant European, North American and Australian discourses of human rights do not describe human rights as such but only constitute specific expressions of human rights, and attempts to outline the characteristics of these discourses. It concludes that the limitations of a concept of human rights based on the exclusive reference to the state, as well as on Eurocentrism and processes of othering, can only be overcome through intercultural polylogues based on respect and equality. Rather than focusing on the concept of rights and their development, this text focuses on the concepts of humans and human dignity.

Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights

In this draft of a book chapter, Jim Nickel and I discuss the philosophical foundations of human rights, paying special attention to the views of Alan Gewirth, James Griffin and John Rawls.