Идеята за „човечество“ и човешките права
The Idea of “Mankind” and Human Rights

Summary/Abstract: In this text I examine the role of the notion of ‚humanity‘ in the philosophical discussion about universality of human rights. In the first part, I trace a distinction between political and philosophical understanding about universality: the first relies on the self-evident character of rights, while the second, following the post-metaphysical credo that no assertion of absolute universality is possible, relies on the approach of contextualizing universality. Thus, the main task of any plausible philosophical approach is the theoretical integration of universality and particularity. Here is where the notion of ‘humanity’ plays important role, because it represents human persons as part of a community, not divided by contextual normative differences. In the second part, I trace the usage of this notion in the philosophical accounts of universal human rights developed by Jürgen Habermas and Rainer Forst. The results suggest that the term ‘humanity’, which has important conceptual place in these two accounts, leads to a false universality, as far as both conceptions relate it to value notions that are not impartial. In the first case, this leads to identifying the context of human rights with that of democratic norms, while at the same time replacing the principle of democratic legitimacy with that of ‘functionality’. In the second case, the usage of ‘humanity’ in the context of moral justification does not relate, but rather detaches the universal from the particular justification. I therefore conclude that ‘humanity’, as an all-inclusive moral notion, can not lead to plausible contextualization of universality. That is why we should turn more attention not to independent moral arguments, but to political conditions for participation in a common regime of rights.

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