Abstract

MURILLO, María Cristina Astier. Morality sources at an international level: when universality overcomes morality. Diacrítica [online]. 2012, vol.26, n.2, pp.233-247. ISSN 0807-8967.

The theory of human rights has gain weight in the academic sphere in the last few years, indeed, it is now embodied in the framework of global justice discourse. Broadly speaking, there are two main opposite theories of human rights which entail two different accounts of moral values over which each theoretical account is justified. Notwithstanding, both theories acknowledge the more general term "rights" as characterized by Steiner^[1], i.e., as the elementary particles of justice, created and parcelled out by justice principles. In this respect, rights' features and characteristics, will turn out to be each society's justice. Therefore, the content of such rights will define and thus constraint, each society's content of principles of justice. Now, when it turns to human rights, understood as a particular set of rights, how these special rights features are justified may determine each societies allocation and thus, distribution of personal liberty and equality. The two theories mentioned are the traditional and the political theory. More precisely, while the traditional theory argues that human rights are rights that any human being posses in virtue of its humanity, political accounts defends that human rights are rights against states, i.e., rights able to justify the limitation on state sovereignty, for the protection of individual rights. In short, the discussion asks whether human rights are mere individual rights, i.e., that primarily protect individual interests, or rather establish as well a set of collective rights with a clear influence in the common good. This work will be structured in four sections; section I will raises some puzzling points about the claim for universality that seems to be in the background on any human right, regardless of the philosophical theory that best explains them. Section II establishes the topic framework in which there can be differentiated legal, moral and human rights, to settle certain limits in scope and domain for different conceptions of rights. Section III analyzes the role which conceptions such as individual and collective interests, moral weight and grounded duties play due to different accounts of rights and how they are due determined. Section IV discusses the derivative problem of human rights as an ethical claim beyond borders, due to the political perspective of the theory of human rights.

Keywords : human rights; universality; moral weight; interests and public reason.

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