ABSTRACT
Human rights may be the most generally recognized expression of global norms today, yet their content and even their nature is a topic of constant disagreement. One reason for this is that human rights comprise several dimensions that are difficult to reconcile. They have a moral nature, expressing urgent human concerns and claims that must not be violated anywhere in the world. Thus they have to be acceptable from many cultural perspectives. They are also legal rights, enshrined in national constitutions as well as in international declarations, covenants and treaties. Furthermore, they have a political meaning, expressing standards of basic political legitimacy. Thus, both nationally and internationally, questions are raised as to whether they are being fulfilled and about how violations could be sanctioned. Apart from these aspects, human rights also have a historical existence, although it is a matter of dispute as to when they actually came into existence. Some scholars date the beginning of the discourse of human rights back to early modern conceptions of natural rights (Tuck 1979), some to late-eighteenth-century “inventions” of human rights (Hunt 2007), while others believe that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 marks a definitively new era and understanding of human rights as a task for the international community (Eide 1998, Beitz 2009). Others argue that it was only after the 1970s that human rights attained a central global political significance (Moyn 2010). In philosophical debates, we encounter a plurality of perspectives on human rights that
accord priority to one of the above-mentioned aspects.1
