ABSTRACT
Different people hold different concepts of human rights. This proposition might initially appear somewhat at odds with the commonly heard assertion that human rights are both universal and obvious (in the sense that they are derived from reason), which may suggest that human rights are unambiguous and uncontroversial. However, there is in practice a lack of agreement on what human rights are. Based on an analysis of the human rights academic literature (but without reproducing quotations here for reasons of space), this chapter identifi es four schools of thought on human rights. It proposes that “natural scholars” conceive of human rights as given ; “deliberative scholars” as agreed ; “protest scholars” as fought for , and “discourse scholars” as talked about . It further proposes that these four schools act as ideal-types, which, arranged around two axes, potentially cover the whole conceptual fi eld of human rights (see Figure 13.1 ). This mapping exercise is useful in that it clarifi es positions from which various arguments about human rights are made, helping to understand where, why, and to what extent agreements are reached and disagreements persist in the human rights fi eld. It also highlights the salience of a variety of positions, which are far less idiosyncratic than the received orthodoxy would suggest. (At the end of a presentation that I gave to the Danish Center for Human Rights, two members of the perhaps twenty-strong audience came to me [independently of each other] to say that my identifi cation of four schools was a relief to them, lifting their sense of being almost a fraud in the Center due to their fear that their position on human rights was just too unorthodox to be acceptable.)
The natural school embraces the most common and well-known defi nition of human rights: that which identifi es human rights as those rights one possesses simply by being a human being. This defi nition, where human rights are viewed as given, can be considered the credo of the natural school. For most natural scholars, human rights are entitlements that, at their core, are negative in character and thus are absolute. The natural school tends to conceive of human rights as
entailing negative obligations that can be expressed as an obligation (e.g., on the government) to refrain from doing something (e.g., torturing). Only negative obligations can be absolute, for positive obligations (e.g., to provide education) are never as clear-cut as a simple prohibition to do something. These entitlements are based on “nature,” a short cut that can stand for God, the Universe, reason, or another transcendental source. The universality of human rights is derived from their natural character. Natural scholars believe that human rights exist independently of social recognition, even though recognition is preferable. They welcome the inscription of human rights in positive law. The natural school has traditionally represented the heart of the human rights orthodoxy.
