Phenomenology and Human Rights:
Experiencing the Self and Other as a Human

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to sketch out a phenomenological account relevant to the theory of human rights. In contrast to orthodox approaches which conceptualise human rights as universal norms or legal provisions which exist ‘out there’ in the objective normative or legal space – to adopt a phenomenological approach to human rights is to recognise the ways that human rights are grounded at the experiential level. Thus, this thesis advances the position that being human is, first and foremost, something that is lived. And that for one to accept that they possess rights by virtue of being human—that defining feature that makes a right a human right—the humanness to which these rights attach cannot be an abstract category, but a meaningful part of their engagement with the self, other, and the world.

Within this frame, this thesis is directed towards describing these spaces where human rights are experienced as meaningful and, additionally, identifying the necessary conditions for being able to take up these spaces of meaning. More specifically, this thesis adopts the implementation of human rights by the United Nations (UN) in peace formation as a limit case to examine the pre-reflective conditions for the experience of human rights. Putting classical and contemporary phenomenological literature in conversation with International Human Rights Law, UN policy documents, and human rights literature the thesis defines the embodied, intersubjective, and normative conditions for being able to experience the self and other as human rights holders.

The thesis demonstrates an original contribution to knowledge by, first, adopting a phenomenological method or approach to law, and to human rights in particular. And second, by describing the pre-reflective conditions for being able to take up human rights as a way of experiencing the self and other.