Theoretical Foundations for Human Rights
This article explores an alternative to the established dichotomy between philosophical (natural law) accounts of human rights, characterized by a foundationalist tendency, and political (practice based) accounts of human rights, which aspire to be non foundationalist. I argue that in order to justify human rights practice, political accounts of human rights cannot do without the support of theoretical foundations, although not necessarily of the natural law variety. As an alternative to natural law metaphysics, a deflationary theory of human rights, based on a deflationary account of truth, is put forward. Starting from a distinction between 'extreme' and 'moderate' forms of deflationism, this article defends a constructivist theory of human rights grounded on the Humean notion of conventionalism. This innovative approach to human rights provides political conceptions of human rights with the foundations (or quasi foundations) they need, but are currently lacking.