ABSTRACT
In this perspective, the philosophically signifi cant aspects of the nature of human rights entail the political relation between human rights, justice and pluralism.
1. The issue of human rights is centered on the concept of modernity . Some political philosophers go back to the “European juridical morality” as the origin of human rights as rights . The Western world is very proud of human rights. In European culture, human rights have undoubtedly become an iconographical presence (Weiler 2001). This, however, does not mean that a similar concept did not exist previously and elsewhere: in Greek philosophy, Hebraism, and Christianity, previously (in the Western world); in Africa; in Islamic culture. The problem is that human rights are modern, because before there were no legal foundations for rights. The idea of equality among mankind is certainly neither European nor modern; what is new, however, is the juridical formalization of rights. The problem of the modernity of human rights is, in any case, less important than its modernization. If this idea is considered as being good, human rights implicate the problem of extension . John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, from different methodological perspectives, are willing to accept this preparatory assumption. The underlying question is cultural integration. Habermas expresses his concern for this problem
(1994, pp. 661-680). The main focus is on the formal (legal) bindingness of rights and, therefore, on the fact of modernization: on the process of universalization of historically given cultural contexts (Skirbekk 1994, p. 216). Modernizing is not conforming: it deals with taking seriously the fact that global enters everywhere in relations with local.
