Justification of Human Rights and Is-Ought Problem

Vol.28,No.1(2020)

Martin Hapla

https://doi.org/10.5817/CPVP2020-1-3

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Abstract
Clarifying the transition from facts to norms is one of the key issues of legal philosophy and ethics. In the article, the author analyzes how various theories of justification of human rights attempt to solve it. He first characterizes human rights as critical moral rights and clarifies in what sense we can say that they exist. He then describes the Is-Ought Problem and analyzes why some approaches cannot deal with him adequately. At first, he focuses on human rights justification through the concept of basic needs and capabilities, later on Robert Alexy’s explicative-existential justification. However, the greatest attention is paid to the justification theory, which was constructed by Alan Gewirth, one of the main representatives of ethical rationalism. According to the author, this is the most sophisticated attempt to deal with this problem in the field of human rights. In the last part of the article, the author formulates his own opinion on it. According to him, the solution is to stop imposing absolute demands on the justification of these rights, but to start assessing its strengths and weaknesses in relation to the concepts that compete with it.

Keywords:
Human Rights; Justification; Normativity; Is-Ought Problem; Moral Reasoning; Ethical Rationalism.

Pages:
37–54
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