ABSTRACT
The philosophical assumption that is at the basis of humanitarian interventionism is the primacy of human rights over national sovereignty: the defense of human life is considered more compelling than sovereignty. This has created important consequences on an institutional and legal plane, as the principle entails some fundamental changes in the moral hierarchy that is supposed to give origin to international law. All definition of human rights, Richard Rorty explicitly says, should not be based on "theses" on the nature of beings, on human nature, and on values alleged to be universally and atemporally true, but "on litigious confrontations" over concrete alternatives. Richard Rorty criticizes essentialism, which he believes to be the misleading tendency to treat the objects of human sciences in the guise of "things," that is, objects one can examine and study "from outside." He also charges philosophy in general with aiming to articulate these reifying descriptions into some global, universal, and unique description.
