Public Lecture on «The Idea of Human Rights»

What are human rights? And where do they come from? The lecture will sketch answers to both of these questions. Human rights are moral right possessed by all human beings simply in virtue of their humanity. And they derive from considerations about human status and the various elements of a good life. Both answers go against recent tendencies in the philosophy of human rights: on the one hand, the tendency to characterize human rights in terms of a political function, such as triggering humanitarian intervention; on the other hand, the tendency to derive human rights from a master value or a small set of values.