Human rights

Human rights refers to the concept of human beings as having universal rights, or status, regardless of legal jurisdiction, and likewise other localizing factors, such as ethnicity and nationality.

Philosophical basis of human rights

Numerous theoretical approaches have been advanced to explain how human rights become part of social expectations. The biological theory considers the comparative reproductive advantage of human social behavior based on empathy and altruism in the context of natural selection. Other theories hold that human rights codify moral behavior, which is a human, social product developed by a process of biological and social evolution (associated with Hume) or as a sociological pattern of rule setting (as in the sociological theory of law and the work of Weber). This approach includes the notion that individuals in a society accept rules from legitimate authority in exchange for security and economic advantage (as in Rawls).

Related Topics:
Hume - Weber - Rawls

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Natural law theories base human rights on the ?natural? moral order based on religious precepts, the assumed common understandings of justice, or the belief that moral behavior is a set of objectively valid prescriptions. In legend, literature, religion and political thought, justice (and eventually the concept of human rights) became socially constructed over time into complex webs of social interaction striving toward a social order in which human beings are treated fairly. Religious societies tend to try to justify human rights through religious arguments. For example, liberal movements within Islam have tried to use the story of Adam in the Qur'an to support human rights in a Muslim context.

Related Topics:
Natural law theories - Liberal movements within Islam - Qur'an

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Other theories are based on human agency, positing such constructs for agreement to rules on the utilitarian principles mediated by public reasoning. The social evolution model is based on human needs and struggle that incorporates an analysis of the norm-creating process. Values become norms through the constitutive process of authoritative decision-making. Such norms may take the form of law through a particular form of authoritative decision making of institutions associated with a legal system. It is the process of public reasoning through human rights norm-creating that progressively weeds out the culturally bound behaviors that are inconsistent with contemporary human rights. In this sense, culturally particular norms adapt to evolving human rights standards as defined in national constitutions and international human rights instruments.

Related Topics:
National constitutions - International human rights instruments

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Ultimately, the term "human rights" is often itself an appeal to a transcendent principle, without basing it on existing legal concepts. The term "humanism" refers to the developing doctrine of such universally applicable values.

Related Topics:
Humanism - Universally applicable

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Some authors argue that nationalism and realism weaken human rights, while individualism and cosmopolitanism strengthen them. This is argued by Klitou in his book "The Friends and Foes of Human Rights." Klitou also outlines the need for a "human identity" in order to empower human rights law.

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