ABSTRACT
Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault share a naturalistic approach to rights that locates them entirely within relations of power. Rights may set limits to the exercise of power over individuals and groups, but they do so within a larger field of power relations. Nietzsche's account of the origin of rights in "recognized and guaranteed degrees of power" implies that, if the power relationships involved in a given regime of rights "undergo any material alteration," then "rights disappear and new ones are created". Nietzsche's approach to rights in terms of power relations emphasizes a dimension that is sometimes absent from contemporary discussion of rights, namely their relational character. While the naturalism of Nietzsche and Foucault implies the absence of any universal justification for those rights outside or beyond the context in which they arise, it is not inconsistent with reliance upon or identification with the normative force of particular rights.
