Courses

What are the foundations and purpose of human rights? Are they pure formal rights which are unable to alter global patterns of inequality, from extreme poverty to the refugee crisis, or are they instruments of claims for freedom and equality? Do they partake of a moralization of politics, the last utopia? Of some other project of structural transformation of the world? The course will examine key issues on human rights from philosophical and political perspectives. It has four components. The first section is an introduction to human rights from a historical and conceptual perspective, showing how the idea of individual and natural rights emerged throughout the Middle Ages up to the social contract theories of the 17th century, and how this idea was developed during the American and the French Revolution. The second section will focus on human rights in relation to justice, whether it is international criminal justice, or modern and contemporary theories of cosmopolitanism or of global constitutionalism in which human rights play a major role. The question of the basis and the universality of human rights will also be debated. The third section will be devoted to critical approaches to human rights, from Marxist, anti-modern and postmodern perspectives. The final section will examine how human rights can be considered as claims, or theoretical and practical tools in order to support women’s rights, social and economic rights, and political resistance.