Moral and political conceptions of human rights: rethinking the distinction

Abstract

In one important strand of the philosophical debate, human rights are seen as a practical benchmark to evaluate and orient matters of national politics, international relations and global governance. The article investigates the possible benefits and problems of this approach. Problematising the well-established distinction between moral and political human rights in philosophical human rights debate, the author follows Paolo Gilabert's attempt to alternatively discuss human rights under the perspective of rights having both an abstract and a specific dimension. Discussing the (self-)understanding of the contemporary human being as representing the subject of human rights, Axel Honneth's recognition theory is applied to concretise Gilabert's humanist claim to do justice to the ‘essentially social’ nature of the human being. While holding on to the traditional idea that human rights are in first instance to be understood as individual rights human beings have in virtue of being human, the important international political function of human rights is accounted for by introducing the term cosmopolitan rights.