Defending and Disputing Human Rights

This article demonstrates how ethics, understood as the theoretical analysis of morality, contribute to the discussion of disagreements over human rights. It starts with an elaboration on the disagreements between proponents of human rights and proceeds to disagreements between human rights proponents and sceptics. It is argued that there are strong reasons to endorse pluralism of human rights. This endorsement includes both ideational disagreements and material conflicts. However, it does not prevent us from defending human rights as a powerful emancipatory project. Open normative universalism, which views moral as well as legal human rights as socially constructed, is presented as an ethical position that secures the democratic dimension of human rights.