2 - Human Rights against Inheritance

Summary

This chapter offers a in-depth analysis of the attacks formulated against human rights in 1790 by Edmund Burke. For Burke, the mere idea of human rights is a subversive weapon since it takes non account of the content of demands for rights. Against this 'abstraction' or 'metaphysical' universality of human rights, Burke seeks to prove the existence of a superior law of historical circumstance. For Burke, human rights equate anarchy, tyranny and hypocrisy. In contrast, he defends the 'true rights of men' which means that each man have a right to benefit from society but which involve no individual equality. More precisely, there are two sides to Burke's critique of the rifghts of man: one we call 'prudential' and another we term 'cosmo-theological'. These two aspects meld into a philosophy of Prescription that furnishes Burke's counter model to human rights. Finally, we argue that Burke's amibiguities make it difficult to determine whether he is an utilitarian, a advocate of classical natural law or a forerunner of a new form of irrationalism and more difficult still to define Burke's relation with the liberal tradition.