Abstract

In order to reconstruct the problem of justification of human rights, article deals with evolution and modern interpretation of this problem. Justification of human rights is regarded as identifying of their limiting grounds, i.e. the manner in which these rights are entrenched in being at all, or at least being human. The author reveals the skeptical and non-skeptical approaches to the justification of human rights, descriptive and normative strategy within the latter, the will theory and the interests theory, as well as the main directions of their criticism. Advocates of the interests theory approach argue that the principal function of human rights is to protect and promote certain essential human interests. Securing human beings’ essential interests is the principal ground upon which human rights may be morally justified. The philosophers John Finnis and Otfried Hoffe are regarded as representatives of the interests theory approach. The interests-based approach tends to construe our fundamental interests as predeterminants of human moral agency. This can have the effect of subordinating the importance of the exercise of freedom as a principal moral ideal. This concern lies at the heart of the will approach to human rights. The will theory attempts to establish the philosophical validity of human rights upon a single human attribute: the capacity for freedom. Will theorists argue that what is distinctive about human agency is the capacity for freedom and that this ought to constitute the core of any account of rights. Herbert Hart, Henry Shue and Alan Gewirth are regarded as representatives of the will theory approach. Criticism of this theory is that if the constitutive condition for the possession of human rights is said to be the capacity for acting in a rationally purposive manner, for example, then it seems to logically follow, that individuals incapable of satisfying this criteria have no legitimate claim to human rights. In conclusion, it noted that the debate about the justification of human rights can not be stopped, due to the very nature of the latter, in particular, the openness of human rights as a consequence of the openness of human being as such.