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On the Right to Have Rights
Human Rights Quarterly ( IF 0.985 ) Pub Date : 2021-05-12
Jordan David Thomas Walters

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • On the Right to Have Rights
  • Jordan David Thomas Walters (bio)
Stephanie DeGooyer, Alastair Hunt, Lida Maxwell, Samuel Moyn, The Right to Have Rights (Verso, 2018), ISBN 9781784787547, 147 pages.

We became aware of the existence of a right to have rights (and that means to live in a framework where one is judged according to actions and opinions) and a right to belong to some kind of organized community, when there suddenly emerged millions of people who had lost and could not regain these rights because of the new global political situation.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt first wrote the phrase "the right to have rights" in a publication in the 1949 summer issue of Modern Review.1 Many years prior to that publication, Arendt was a stateless refugee. Fleeing Hitler's Germany, she sought refuge in France. Yet after the German occupation of France in 1940, Arendt once again had to flee, but appealing to US diplomats would not do her any good since the "State Department discouraged the issuance of visas to any of the thousands of refugees fleeing the Nazis."2 Luckily, as it turned out, Arendt eventually managed to become a naturalized US citizen in 1951. Reflecting on her struggle as a stateless refugee, Arendt's phrase "the right to have rights" appeared again near the end of her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. In the book, Arendt thought about the preconditions that are necessary for any civil, political, or social rights. If such rights were to exist, there first had to be [End Page 398] a "right to have rights."3 But what might it mean to claim a "right" to have rights? And what might Arendt have meant in coining this infamous phrase?

Many activists have treated the phrase as an "uncomplicated synonym for human rights."4 On a first pass reading of the phrase, we might be inclined to take it as the assertion that behind all civil rights stands an inalienable moral right, one fundamental right that is pre-legal. Understood in this way, the singular right in the phrase was "born out of the realization that in order to have rights, it seems that one must first have a right to be a member of a political community."5 All well and good. But Arendt was skeptical of inalienable moral rights. So, the usage of the singular "right" in the phrase gave rise to a paradox for her: if one does not already belong to a right-conferring political community, then how can one assert the right to belong? Put differently, if you need to belong in order to assert any rights, then how can there be a "right to have rights"?6 In an attempt to clarify Arendt's phrase, and the puzzles it raises, The Right to Have Rights presents us with an extended meditation on the phrase. Rather than solicit four separate analyses of the phrase, each chapter examines a piece of Arendt's phrase: in Chapter 1, Stephanie DeGooyer examines the singular "right"; in Chapter 2, Lida Maxwell examines what it is "to have" rights; in Chapter 3, Samuel Moyn examines the plural "rights" contained in Arendt's phrase; and finally, in Chapter 4, Alastair Hunt asks us to consider the question that the phrase poses: who are the bearers of these rights?

In what follows I will briefly examine each chapter of the book (omitting commentary on the afterword), and then offer up a critique of what I take to be a shortcoming of the book, namely, its lack of engagement with natural rights theorists (and so-called Orthodox accounts of human rights).

In the first chapter of the book Stephanie DeGooyer attempts to complicate the popular understanding of Arendt's phrase, understood as an "uncomplicated synonym for human rights."7 DeGooyer asks if this reading "merely restate[s] and reinforce[s] the tautological relationship between citizen and universal rights that Arendt identifies in her critique of human rights?"8 Given Arendt's skepticism of human rights, DeGooyer wonders how Arendt can "speak of a right for millions of stateless persons to belong to a political community without, at the same time...



中文翻译:

论享有权利

代替摘要,这里是内容的简要摘录:

  • 论享有权利
  • 乔丹·大卫·托马斯·沃尔特斯(生物)
斯蒂芬妮·德古瓦(Stephanie DeGooyer),阿拉斯泰尔·亨特(Alastair Hunt),丽达·麦克斯韦(Lida Maxwell),塞缪尔·莫恩(Samuel Moyn),《享有权利的权利》(Verso,2018年),ISBN 9781784787547,147页。

当人们突然涌现出数百万人时,我们意识到存在着一种权利(即生活在一种根据行动和观点来判断的框架中)和属于某种有组织社区的权利的权利的存在。由于新的全球政治局势,他们失去了并且无法重新获得这些权利。

汉娜·阿伦特(Hannah Arendt),极权主义的起源

汉娜·阿伦特(Hannah Arendt)首先在1949年夏季刊《现代评论》Modern Review)的出版物中写道“拥有权利的权利” 。1在该出版物出版之前的许多年,阿伦特都是无国籍难民。她逃离希特勒的德国,在法国寻求庇护。然而,在1940年德国占领法国后,阿伦特再次不得不逃亡,但是向美国外交官求助对她没有任何好处,因为“国务院不鼓励向逃离纳粹的数千名难民发放签证”。2幸运的是,事实证明,阿伦特最终在1951年成为美国公民。考虑到她作为无国籍难民的奋斗,阿伦特的“拥有权利的权利”一词再次出现在她的书末,极权主义的起源。在书中,阿伦特思考了任何公民权利,政治权利或社会权利所必需的先决条件。如果存在这样的权利,则首先必须有[结束页398] “拥有权利的权利”。3但是,声称拥有权利的“权利”意味着什么?而阿伦特(Arendt)在造出这个臭名昭著的短语时可能意味着什么呢?

许多激进主义者将这一短语视为“简单的人权代名词”。4在初读该短语时,我们可能倾向于将其视为这样一种主张,即在所有民权之后都拥有不可剥夺的精神权利,这是一项先于法律的基本权利。以这种方式可以理解,短语中的单数权利是“出于意识到拥有权利似乎首先必须拥有成为政治共同体成员的权利的认识而诞生的”。5一切都很好。但是阿伦特对不可剥夺的精神权利持怀疑态度。因此,短语中单数的“权利”的使用为她带来了一个悖论:如果一个人还不属于享有权利的政治共同体,那么一个人如何主张归属权呢?换句话说,如果您需要归属以主张任何权利,那么如何有“拥有权利的权利”呢?6为了阐明阿伦特的用语及其引起的困惑,《享有权利的权利》为我们提供了对该短语的扩展冥想。每一章都没有对短语进行四次单独的分析,而是考察了Arendt的短语:在第1章中,斯蒂芬妮·德古耶尔(Stephanie DeGooyer)考察了单数的“正确”。在第二章中,丽达·麦克斯韦(Lida Maxwell)研究了什么是“拥有”权;在第3章中,塞缪尔·莫恩(Samuel Moyn)研究了Arendt短语中包含的复数“权利”;最后,在第4章中,阿拉斯泰尔·亨特(Alastair Hunt)要求我们考虑该短语带来的问题:是这些权利的持有者?

在接下来的内容中,我将简要回顾该书的每一章(省略对后记的评论),然后对我认为该书的不足之处(即缺乏对自然权利理论家的参与)提出批评。所谓的东正教人权报告)。

在该书的第一章中,斯蒂芬妮·德古耶(Stephanie DeGooyer)试图使人们普遍理解阿伦特(Arendt)的短语,即“简单的人权代名词”。7德古瓦问这句话是否“仅仅重申和加强了阿伦特在对人权的批判中所确定的公民与普遍权利之间的重言式关系?” 8鉴于阿伦特对人权的怀疑,DeGooyer想知道阿伦特如何“谈到无数无国籍人属于一个政治社区的权利,而同时又...

更新日期:2021-05-12
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