Conclusion
Human rights, distrusted by Bentham, through emergence ofGesellshaft, have sometimes been identified with rights of market men and gradually on an ad hoc basis and so have been given a ‘relational’ or relativist character for that reason. Such a view ignores the test of humanness or the ‘tele’ of human rights surviving any political association and the need for full development of human personality as an autonomous being inherent in full respect for all as moral persons. This disposes of the view of human rights in terms of rules of a game, or of connection between human rights and human action, or of the standard of the ‘prudent’ man or, finally, of the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie. Equally, that very test of humanness disposes of criticisms of the human rights theory based on a concern for implementation of rights, on ‘concentric circles’ based on the specific and concrete, on the ‘impossibility’ of liking the billions, on the distinction between ‘negative’, ‘positive’ and administrative rights, on the condition of being able to make ‘valid claims’ and thereby denying human rights to the deprived millions in poor countries, on the ‘social justice’ model, on the potential for ‘violence and conflict’ and, finally, on the ‘vagueness’ or subjectivity of human rights. An eclectic synthesis not between good and evil nor between right and wrong but between the extremes of the views presented in such critical explanations e.g. between the New Right and the New Left and between Hobbes and Rousseau) is what is needed in order to present a workable theory of human rights in the modern-day world.
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References
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Narain, J. Human and fundamental rights: What are they about?. Liverpool Law Rev 15, 163–187 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01079918
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01079918