Liberální politická teorie a práva etnických komunit a jiných menšin
Liberal Political Theory and the Rights of Ethnic Communities and Other Minorities

Summary/Abstract: Since the times of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the task of exploring the relationships between the individual and the state has always been at the center of liberal political theory. The assumption that men have to create their own vision of a good life as they see it fit, and do so as individuals, and problems in these relationships consume pages of the writings of mainstream academic theorists, and pronouncements about them have become central features of historic documents. The truth that the American Declaration of lndependence held to be self-evident is truth concerning the individual and the state: all men, as individuals, have inalienable rights, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Similarly the French revolutionaries, though focusing on the nation too, proclaimed the rights of man and of the citizen. This tradition is carried on in contemporary international declarations and covenants on human rights, for - with certain exceptions - the rights enumerated are the rights of individuals in relation to the state. The argument here will be the liberal conception - an individualist conception - is overly limited. lt is not enough to think in terms of two-level relationships, with the individual at one level and the state at another. Considering the heterogeneity of mankind and of the population and virtually every state in the world, the liberal demonstration of the rationality of a social contract based on morally fit individuals is problematic. lt is also necessary to think in terms of ethnic communities and other kinds of groups with identifiable social and cultural characteristics, and to indude them among the kinds of right-and-duty bearing units whose interrelationships are to be explored.

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