Human Rights in Political Theory
| Author | Susan Mendus |
| Published date | 01 March 1995 |
| Date | 01 March 1995 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1995.tb01733.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political
Studies
(1999,
XLIII,
10-24
Human Rights
in
Political Theory
SUSAN
MENDUS*
‘The
principle
that
human rights
must
be defended
has
become
one
of
the
commonplaces of
our
age
.
. . virtually
no
one actually rejects the principle
of defending human
rights.’
‘There are
no
[human]
rights and belief
in
them
is
one
with
belief
in
unicorns and witches.’
’
The two quotations draw attention to a considerable, and interesting,
conundrum inherent in any attempt to discuss the status of human rights in
political theory. This is that, in recent years, as political commitment to human
rights has grown, philosophical commitment has waned. Since
1945,
political
commitment has been expressed
in
numerous Charters and Declarations of
which the
1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European
Simultaneously, membership of organizations such as Amnesty International
has burgeoned, and human rights legislation has increased at both national and
international level. Even though, as Lukes points out, human rights are
violated virtually everywhere, the principle that they should be defended is
asserted virtually everywhere. ‘Virtually no one actually rejects the principle of
defending human rights.’
No
one, that is, except political philosophers. For in the same post-war
period, the philosophical credentials of human rights have been subjected to
considerable scrutiny, and have regularly been found wanting. There
is,
of
course. nothing new in philosophical scepticism about human rights: every
undergraduate student is familiar with Bentham’s assertion that
‘Natural
rights
is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense
-
nonsense upon
stilt^'.^
And with Karl Marx’s allegation that ‘none of the
so-
called rights
of
man goes beyond egoistic man, man as he is in civil society,
namely
an
individual withdrawn behind his private interests and whims and
separated from the community’.4 But what is troubling is that these
philosophical reservations have increased rather than diminished against a
*
I
am grateful to David Beetham. both for the initial invitation to contribute
to
this volume, and
for his very helpful comments on an earlier draft
of
the paper. My thanks also go
to
John Horton,
Peter Jones, and Peter Nicholson for their constructwe written comments, and to the members of
the Political Theory Workshop at the University
of
York where the first draft of the paper was
discussed.
I
S.
Lukes, ‘Five fables about human rights’, in
S.
Shute and
S.
Hurley (eds),
On
Human Rights:
The
O.rford Amnesty Leriures,
1993
(New York, Basic, 1993), p.
20.
’
A.
Maclntyre,
After Virtue
(London, Duckworth, 1981), p. 67.
’
J. Bentham,
Anarchical Fallacies
as printed in Jeremy Waldron (ed.),
Nonsense upon Stilts:
Bentham, Burke and Marx
on
ihe Righis
of
Man
(London, Methuen, 1987), p.
53.
i,
Poiirical Studm Association
1995
Published
by
Blackwell Publ~shers.
108
Cowley Road, Oxford
OX4
IJF.
UK
and
238
Main
Street. Cambridge,
MA
02142,
USA.
K.
Marx,
On
the Jenish Quesiion
as printed in Waldron,
Nonsense
upon
Stilts,
p.
147.
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