Introductory

The year 2018 was the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Has it aged well? Does it still have the inspiring force that made it possible for the grammar of human rights to become dominant all over the world, even when and where its universal character was contested in the name of regional or specific language of rights? Does it need to be expanded to include rights that were inconceivable in 1948?

This special issue of Human Affairs is aimed at answering these and other questions connected to the idea of human rights. Although the idea itself is very old, and has been widely discussed by moral, political and legal philosophers, and more recently law theorists, historians, sociologists and anthropologists, it still creates divisions between scholars and governments, and the courts and institutions of civil society. No consensus has been reached regarding the status of human rights or the exact meaning of the adjective “human”. When the Stoics introduced the idea that all human beings are to be considered children of the same mother, of Nature, into Western philosophy, nobody was in doubt about the meaning of this appeal. Today, with the possibilities that have opened up with technological advances, we have to ask ourselves whether post-human beings and AI could also be considered possible bearers of rights.

The first paper, by Luigi Caranti, deals with foundational aspects of human rights. He laments that, despite their increasing political and legal role in the real world, human rights have not fared so well in philosophical reflection. In particular, the question concerning their foundation is still in want of a convincing answer. Drawing on his previous work on the issue, Caranti aims first to show why the main contemporary attempts at a philosophical foundation of human rights fail. Second, he proposes an alternative foundation strategy based on a critical appraisal of Kant’s notion of human dignity, and third he discusses the major objection that this strategy is bound to face: he suggests that we have dignity (and consequently human rights) because we are autonomous beings, that is, we are capable of moral behaviour. Ultimately he has to concede that persons who lack rational capacities (temporarily or permanently) and whose autonomy is impaired do not possess human rights. He then tries to deal with this objection by mobilizing new conceptual resources.

Alberto Pirni discusses intergenerational justice by taking both an historical and an ethical-modal approach. With regard to the historical perspective, he provides a preliminary re-reading of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which he attempts to highlight its intergenerational commitment. This approach enables him first to discuss intergenerational justice from a phenomenological perspective and then to follow an ethical-modal approach.

In the first part of the next paper, Gustavo Souza deals with a possible tension within Honneth’s theory of justice as presented in Freedom’s Right. To this end, Souza discusses an objection to Honneth advanced by Georg Lohmann and then critically evaluates the positions of both scholars. This leads him to recur to Durkheim’s state theory, in which, according to Souza, positive elements can be found that explain the complex relation between positive individual rights, on the one hand, and the normative framework of social freedom as defined by Honneth on the other.

The remaining two papers discuss human rights in the light of a specific society, the Brazilian one, which is marked by deep-rooted gender and economic inequalities that lead to legal inequalities and, sometimes, to the negation of the basic rights of women and members of the disadvantaged groups.

Milene Tonetto discusses feminist reformulations of human rights. Feminist philosophers recognize that the language of human rights can support women’s issues precisely because it is widely accepted and implemented in legal and political institutions. However, they suggest the language should be modified and human rights reformulated and integrated through recurrence to other ethical frameworks. Tonetto argues that Nussbaum’s capability approach could meet this demand by taking into account the insights on rationality and care by feminist theorists. In the final part of her paper, Tonetto tests Nussbaum’s claim that human rights and capabilities complement each other in her discussion of the Brazilian case.

Starting from empirical research that suggests that the Brazilian poor do not see their situation as being the result of social injustice, and do not seem to think that their rights have been violated in some way, Alessandro Pinzani outlines the historical reasons for this phenomenon and then suggests that, in cases like the Brazilian one, we should abandon the grammar of rights for the grammar of needs, as it corresponds better to the experience of the poor. He further distinguishes between the grammar and language of rights, and claims that the latter is often used to disguise a disrespect for the former that cannot be easily detected, making recurrences to a different grammar, that of needs, even more desirable.

The wide range of topics discussed in these papers shows how controversial the notion of human rights still is and yet how central it remains to philosophical reflection as well as to the legal and political spheres. Issues are raised that are relevant from the perspective of ethics, political philosophy, legal philosophy and social philosophy. Existing conditions are criticized and possible future situations are imagined in which individuals could be more autonomous and emancipated. This special issue represents a contribution to the lively and diverse debate about such issues.