Review article

THE POWER AND POWERLESSNESS OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Rade Kalanj ; Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb

Abstract

Starting from the conclusion that modern time can be characterized as “the age of human rights”, this paper makes enquiries about the genesis of the discourse on human rights and tries to answer the question whether their power grows or declines. AN answer to the question results from the structural analysis of the typical “discourse formations” through which human thought on human rights has gone through. In this respect, it we can converse about four typical discourses: the discourse of founding universalism (the age of French and American declaration), the socially differentiated discourse of industrial development, the discourse of large mobilizations and bloc power structures, and the discourse of globalization and singularity. Apart from this, the paper especially draws attention to the status of human rights in the sociological science and shows that sociology in this field falls behind other social sciences. From the mentioned analyses follows a conclusion that human rights are constantly branching out, that their field is widening, but that they loose substantiality they had at the age of the founding ideas. The instrumental (institutional) power of human rights grows, and there is more and more less ideas about their ontologically set essence. This is the result of the modern societies instrumental power growth.

Keywords

autonomy; equality; freedom; globalization; industrialism; mobilization; natural rights; relativism; social rights; universalism

Hrčak ID:

141413

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/141413

Publication date:

15.1.1996.

Article data in other languages: croatian german

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