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Call for Publications
Theme: Human rights
Publication: Implications Philosophiques
Date: Special Issue
Deadline: 15.4.2020
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Since the mid-twentieth century, human rights seem to have evolved.
They have multiplied and been increasingly diversified. New
“generations” of rights, different from the original civil and
political rights, have flourished.
In that process, human rights seem to have separated more and more
from the individualistic conception to which they were closely
related at the beginning. Nowadays, human rights seem to relate to a
larger – but perhaps more ambiguous – conception of humanity linked
to the idea of an equal concern and respect due to every human being.
Because of their humanity, humans do not only have fundamental
liberties; they also have legitimate aspirations – which may be
individual or collective – that must be satisfied.
It is those more recent evolutions which we would like to account for.
In order to provide some guidance to the contributors, we have
determined six possible approaches which are exposed below. However,
the contributors are not required to choose one of those. Since the
subject is very wide and complex, there are certainly other
perspectives which would be of great interest. Moreover, for each
possible approach we identified, a few references are given. However,
those references are only examples. The contributors are not required
to use them.
1. Human rights as subjective rights
When talking about human rights, one of the most difficult questions
is: what do we mean with the word “right”? Indeed, in that context,
that word seems very ambivalent for two reasons.
First, traditionally, human rights were not viewed as legal rights,
that is, rights susceptible to be invoked before tribunals to support
legal claims. This has only begun to change since the mid-twentieth
century. From that point, more and more human rights have been
“legalized” but not all of them. There are still a lot of rights
which, for professional judges, have no value other than symbolic
(for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is
not legally binding). For those non-legal human rights, it is
therefore unclear what the word “right” means (are they moral rights,
political rights? And what does that mean?).
Second, even in the case of “legalized” human rights, the meaning of
the word “right” remains unclear as it cannot be understood in its
traditional sense, as the positive aspect of a specific debt or
obligation (for example, what can be the precise content of the
obligation corresponding to a “housing right”?). This also invites us
to a broader reflection around the notions of subjective rights and
natural rights.
2. Human rights as historical constructions
Human rights have much evolved over time. Their history dates back to
the antiquity when the first doctrines of natural law appeared.
Therefore, it is certainly very useful to study that historical
development in order to properly explain what they are.
Besides, it might also be interesting to study the way human rights
influenced the work of the main legal and political philosophers over
time. In particular, studying the role that could be assigned to
human rights in certain political and moral currents (such as
utilitarism, libertarism, liberal-egalitarism, etc.) could be of
great interest.
3. Human rights, law and morals
Human rights seem to be at the crossroads of law and morals.
Therefore, their study may benefit from an examination of the
existing connections between law and morals, as well as the
distinction between those two notions (which remains one of the most
controversial problems of the contemporary legal philosophy).
4. Human rights, democracy and the separation of powers
With the development of human rights, a new problem has emerged: that
of their conciliation with the political ideas of democracy and
separation of powers.
Some jurists have argued that the existence of multiple human rights
the content of which is sometimes difficult to identify and which,
moreover, frequently conflict with each other, provide the judges
with the illegitimate power (in a democratic regime) to contradict
the will expressed by the people’s representatives.
Besides, the French philosopher Marcel Gauchet defended the idea
that, because our contemporary democracies have made human rights a
central component of politics, they have lost the ability to
transform such rights into a real collective political power, leading
to the paradoxical situation where, in returning to its original
roots, democracy has become its own enemy.
Those criticisms show that the coexistence of human rights, democracy
and the separation of powers is more problematic than it seems at
first sight.
5. Practical aspects of human rights
It may also be interesting to question the role of human rights in
political or altruist
