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HUMAN RIGHTS: CONTRIBUTION TO THE ANALYSIS OF A CONCEPT
Werner Becker
; Centar za filozofiju i osnove znanosti Sveučilišta Justus Liebig u Giessenu, Giessen, Njemačka
Sažetak
Although our talk about human rights is part of the ethical awareness of contemporary
politics, it still has not received adequate theoretical justification
and foundation. Serious philosophical problems arose in the very beginning
of the history of the “human rights” concept, with Locke’s liberal natural right
and Kant’s reasonable right. According to the author, the difficulty stems from
the concept of person, for in every liberal legal theory the person is perceived
as bearer of human and fundamental rights. Meanwhile, the dominant constitutional
theory of human and fundamental rights starts from the identical
meanings of “person” as an individual, in its uniqueness, and of “man” as a
general definition. It is, however, necessary to start from the fundamental difference
between the two key concepts. While the “man” concept is defined
universalistically, there is no universal concept for persons and no possibility
of breaking them down into subcategories. While every individual, as instance
of the concept, must be defined in the same way as everyone else, persons are
defined individualistically; each person is a unique individual which can be
neither duplicated nor multiplied.
The author proposes a solution of the fundamental rights problem-matter
within the framework of constitutional law. Personal rights are brought to existence
as follows: organs of the state, in accordance with positive law, give
to the individual the title of state-citizen as an individualistically unique le-
gal person. Everyone receives it, in the same way, as a unique and irreplaceable
person. In the normal conditions, the state has the obligation to make
sure, via courts and the police, that everyone’s personal right is untouchable.
On the basis of this logic, a demarcation line can be drawn between the personal
fundamental rights and the collective rights of citizens (such as political
rights, which the individual can practise only together with others). Only
such an interpretation would provide our libertarian fundamental rights with a
consistently secular character, with no concession to the internal attachment,
in whichever way it may be concealed, to metaphysical or religious presuppositions.
Ključne riječi
human and fundamental rights; person; man; mankind; nation
Hrčak ID:
50952
URI
Datum izdavanja:
12.3.2010.
Posjeta: 2.173 *