The Contemporary Dialectic of United Nations Human Rights

This article is divided in two parts, with the first primarily outlining a theoretical conception that could act as an alternative to the moral-cosmopolitan foundation (1–4) and the latter with the practical application of this theoretical conception (5–8). In the first section, I inquire into the nature of the declaration of human rights as a revolutionary theoretical statement of the absolutely free status of the human subject (1). I then proceed to specify (2) the formal-linguistic features of the declaration, interpreting it as a performative act of a special kind, and (3) its content, namely the principle of subjective freedom as based on the universalizing capacity of the subject (thought). In the final section (4), I lay out the dialectical character of the declaration and of the development processes prompted by it. The second part of this article deals with the contradiction of the Western human rights discourse introduced by non-Western conceptions and attempts to show the dialectical-constructive role of this contradiction (5). Through the non-Western negation, the abstractly cosmopolitan character of the Western human rights discourse emerges and, with this awareness, its fundamentally asymmetrical structure (6). In the next section (7), I recollect the different lines of the argument and, referring to some concrete cases, point toward a conciliation pivoted on the necessity of introducing duties as an integral part of subjective freedom beside rights. In the concluding section (8), I make some further practical considerations and draw a general conclusion.