Toward a Better Understanding of Human Rights

• Published in: Fudan journal of the humanities and social sciences Vol. 8; no. 3; pp. 365 - 367
• Main Author: Lohmann, Georg
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.09.2015
• Subjects: Economics; Introduction; Philosophy; SIAL; Social Sciences; 人权; 国际条约; 地理; 基本权利; 法律保护; 第二次世界大战后; 西方文化
• ISSN: 1674-0750; 2198-2600
• DOI: 10.1007/s40647-015-0092-9

In all countries of the world, human rights are formally recognized in one way or another, either as in the People＇s Republic of China by a separate article in the Constitution, or in Germany as fundamental rights of the Constitution and/or by ratification of international treaties. At the same time, human rights are controver- sial in their general understanding and in many specific questions. They are often disregarded or abused as an instrument of power politics. And the institutions of control, enforcement and the legal protection could be improved in many ways. On the one hand, you can speak of a success story of human rights since the World War II, and on the other hand, specific design, effective protection and enforcement are only realized in approaches, so some speak of an impending failure of the project of human rights. There are many reasons for this ambivalent assessment. An important reason seems to be that even the ideas about what human rights are, are unclear and controversial. Many see the human rights unhistorical, as if they were eternal ideas, and adversely affect human rights with too high expectations. Others see in them only moral rights, or reduce them to mere political instruments. Finally, some doubt whether the human rights because they are historically developed in Western cultures, can be truly universal rights. Therefore, a conceptual and argumentative clarification should be attempted from a philosophical perspec- tive. This will be the aim of the following three papers. The first two papers date back to lectures on human rights, Georg Lohmann hold at Fudan University in April 2014. The third paper was annexed by courtesy of Regina Kreide, who is an important scholar on the subject of human rights in Germany, but also internationally.