A CRÍTICA DE HANNAH ARENDT À CONCEPÇÃO MODERNA DE DIREITOS HUMANOS

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the critique by the contemporary philosopher Hannah Arendt concerning the modern conception of human rights, which, according to her diagnosis in Origins of Totalitarianism, has proven to be mere empty rhetoric in the face of the experience lived by the growing wave of refugees and stateless persons in the 20th century. With the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, the existence of rights that, being inalienable, would have their origin and ultimate goal in Man himself, was affirmed; however, at the same time that Man became the sole sovereign in the field of law, the people became the sole sovereign in matters of government, since the rights of Man would find their guarantee in the people’s right to free and sovereign self-government. In this sense, it was only with the wave of stateless persons and refugees in the 20th century that the total identification between human rights and the rights of peoples in the European system of nation-states became evident, since rights considered inalienable and independent of any government suddenly ceased to have any protection or guarantee when human beings began to exist without self-government – ​​such as the stateless persons. Thus, it became clear that the loss of national rights was equivalent to the loss of human rights and that only the condition of citizenship included the human being within legal protection. Faced with this impasse, Arendt advocates for the universal right to have rights, which would be realized through the right to belong to a political community.