Reflections of Humanism and Liberalism within the Human Rights

Abstract

Human rights have become one of the most effective normative systems of our age. States, societies, actions of individuals and even other rules are evaluated according to whether they comply with human rights. Human rights are almost accepted as the most fundamental normative theory of humankind. In this study, I discuss the connections between human rights with humanism and liberalism. Firstly, I address the relationship between both ideologies and human rights; in this way, I show how these ideologies are in harmony with human rights in general. Later, I elaborate and concretize this relationship by showing four different and more concrete points of contact. To examine these contact points, I use a classification based on the term human rights itself. According to this classification, the concept of human in human rights represents the relationship of these rights with humanism, and the concept of right represents its relationship with liberalism. In this study, I argue that there is a strong harmony between human rights and humanism and liberalism. More specifically, I have discussed four contact points. Firstly, human rights are de facto separated from their philosophical foundations, in other words, especially in the populer rhetoric and the practice, philosophical foundations of the rights are obscured. Nevertheless, a secular framework is generally used when talking about the theoretical foundations of the rights. Secondly, human rights are really about the rights of human beings. The rights have nothing to do with the wide variety of animal cruelties. Thirdly, the fact that human rights is a theory based on the rights, not duties, have represents the connection between these rights and liberal individualism. And finally, at least at the point they have reached today, human rights paradoxically require a powerful state.