Hannah Arendt: The Rights of Man, the Political Community, Judgment and Recognition

Abstract

This chapter examines the contribution of Hannah Arendt to our understanding of human rights. It argues that Arendt provides a unique, empirical contribution to the literature criticising natural rights; her experience as a stateless person provides a compelling addition to previous theoretical arguments against natural rights. Further, her conception of the ‘right to have rights’ is important, and supportable, and that it is in many ways analogous to the ‘recognition of persons’ found in T. H. Green and discussed in Chap. 2. The chapter also argues that recognition is critically important to Arendt, rights require recognition, and so does the right to have rights; furthermore, recognition is critical for Arendt’s conception of the political community as an arena for disclosing speech and action.