Preliminary communication

Human rightism: Rousseauian or Anti-Rousseauian Heritage?

Mina Đikanović orcid.org/0000-0003-0582-3922 ; University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad, Serbia

Abstract

The author tends to show that contemporary discussions on human rights and fights for their realization are significantly different from Rousseau’s intentions, although he is considered to be one of the main founders of modern concept of the fight for human rights. The first argument in favour of that thesis is seen in fact that contemporary world comprehends human rights primarily in forms of “political correctness” and transformation of rights of the man into the rights of specific groups of people. In such a way, the original meaning of Rousseau’s claim that “man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” is blurred (it is no longer man, but female, child, veteran, person with special needs, member of LGBT community etc.). Second – and definitely more problematic argument – is possibility to interpret Rousseauian “return to nature” as directly opposite to contemporary tendencies toward expanding the volume of human rights, since only the civilization progress makes even possible something like “the rights of the disenfranchised”.

Keywords

Jean-Jacques Rousseau; human rights; human rightism; political correctness; partialisation; nature

Hrčak ID:

132991

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/132991

Publication date:

26.11.2014.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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