The Philosophical foundationalism in Human Rights

The idea of human rights has become gradually in the twentieth century the primary normative discourse of international relations. Born out of well-defined practical requirements, the vast legal set of human rights norms was constructed, however, by complex agreements that concealed fundamental theoretical contradictions. In this paper I will analyze the terms of the contemporary discussion about the possibility of philosophically grounding, or not, human rights. The article recovers part of the historic debate on the formation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and reconstructs the arguments of normative foundationalists and substantive foundationalists to demonstrate the ability of each theoretical set to deal with the challenges of finding coherence between rational justification and the practical application of human rights.

Keywords: Human Rights; Foundationalism; Normative Theories; Substantive Theories.