Political Theory Research Group seminar series: 10 Feb 2016

Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Photo: Unknown – Franklin D Roosevelt Library website

Rowan Cruft’s paper “The Individualism of Human Rights” explores the thesis that human rights are justified by what they do for individuals, rather than for collectives like ‘humankind’ or ideals like ‘beauty’. This means that a human right is always grounded in a feature of the individual right-holder (such as an interest, need, freedom, or capability). Rowan offers ‘the right to political participation’ as an example – the importance of your freedom of political participation is enough to ground the right, aside from any wider benefits of political participation to society or political institutions. Continue reading →