Public Law Studies Quarterly

Human Rights in Another Mirror: The Phenomenology of Human ‎Rights in the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas

Document Type : Article

Authors

Mehdi Rezaei 1
Maziyar Khademi 2
Alireza Eskandari 3

1 Associate professor, Department of Public and International Law, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Allam Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran

2 Ph.D Student in Public Law, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Allameh Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran

3 ..D Student in Public Law, Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, Allameh Tabatabai University, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22059/jplsq.2023.345737.3136
Abstract
Human rights rank among the symbols of liberal political thought. However, the critical standards of the liberal perspective present an individualistic and antagonistic image of human society. Levinas is a thinker who critiques this aspect. From his viewpoint, human rights derive their objective meaning from the face-to-face encounter with the "other." Thus, an interesting similarity arises between the status of human rights and the phenomenology of this encounter as articulated by Levinas. The main question of this research is: how does Levinas's justification for human rights differ from the liberal approach? From this perspective, one of the most important starting points is the reality that the image of the "other" is not described by a common characteristic found in its social or superficial context. Levinas's justification of human rights responds more convincingly to the common objections that human rights promote individual selfishness and an antagonistic model of society. Levinas defends human rights as the rights of the "other," not as rights based on selfishness. The rights of the "other," according to a non-state condition, possess a kind of trans-territorial character and independence within a political community. The research method is descriptive-analytical.

Keywords

Phenomenology
the right ‎of the other
human rights
‎I
the other
Levinas.‎
Subjects

  1. English

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Public Law Studies Quarterly
Volume 55, Issue 1 - Serial Number 41
Spring 2025
Spring 2025
Pages 719-741

  • Receive Date 20 November 2022
  • Revise Date 24 April 2023
  • Accept Date 10 September 2023

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