ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the historical sources of human rights justifications, and surveys key modern human rights theories, and then analyzes some of the current conflicts in human rights theory. It examines the tenets of cultural relativism, particularly in the context of international human rights. Religious doctrine offers a promising possibility of constructing a broad intercultural rationale that supports the various fundamental principles of equality and justice that underlie international human rights. Natural law theory led to natural rights theory—the theory most closely associated with modern human rights. Natural rights theory makes an important contribution to human rights. It affords an appeal from the realities of naked power to a higher authority that is asserted for the protection of human rights. Marxist theory, like natural law, is also concerned with the nature of human beings. Marxism sees a person's essence as the potential to use one's abilities to the fullest and to satisfy one's needs.
