New directions in theorizing human rights
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088215612377 |
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| Author | Eileen Hunt Botting |
Journal of International Political Theory
2016, Vol. 12(1) 3 –9
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088215612377
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New directions in theorizing
human rights
Eileen Hunt Botting
University of Notre Dame, USA
Introduction
This symposium gathers together into a philosophical conversation some of the cutting-
edge trends in human rights theory. Each of us engages the question of the contested defi-
nition of human rights, offering new political, philosophical, and narrative approaches to
conceptualizing the basis, content, and scope of the rights of humans. Our analyses break
down some of the typical binaries that have governed human rights theory since Jeremy
Bentham (2002 [1791–1795]) declared the concept of natural rights “nonsense on stilts”
(2002: 317). Following a recent trend in human rights theory (Douzinas, 2007: 9–10;
Gilabert, 2011; Montero, 2014; Valentini, 2012), the essays push past the long-standing
philosophical divide between “naturalistic” conceptions of rights (or moral rights), on
one hand, and “juridical rights” (or legal rights), on the other (Beitz, 2009: 23–27, 49).
Naturalistic conceptions of rights (or what John Stuart Mill called “moral rights”) are
those rights of humans that obtain independently of positive law insofar as they are
rationally justified by way of a conception of the nature of the human being (Mill, 1963–
1991 [1861]: 242, 247). Such naturalistic conceptions of rights may or may not rely on a
conception of the state of nature or a pre-political state of humanity (Beitz, 2009: 49).
They also may or may not rely on deep and divisive moral, metaphysical, supernatural,
or religious ideas. For example, Mill’s liberal utilitarian conception of moral rights was
grounded on a conception of the human being that was explicitly secular, empirically
grounded, and non-metaphysical (Botting, in press). By contrast, juridical rights are
those rights of humans that are defined, articulated, and changed within the tiers of inter-
national and national legal systems. Rather than accept the limits set by this more than
200-year-old philosophical division between naturalistic/moral and juridical/legal rights,
we each treat the practical possibility of defining, justifying, and defending concepts of
human rights both within the context of international and national law and without them.
At the same time, we each retain a sense of the moral power of human rights discourse,
struggles, and argumentation to construct in law and culture a set of contestable, revisa-
ble, yet translatable normative standards that resonate with people’s needs and interests
Corresponding author:
Eileen Hunt Botting, University of Notre Dame, 217 O’Shaughnessy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA.
Email: ehunt@nd.edu
612377IPT0010.1177/1755088215612377Journal of International Political TheoryBotting
research-article2015
Introduction
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