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The Genesis of Hannah Arendt’s Conception of Human Rights
Author(s) -
Robitzsch Jan Maximilian
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the southern journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.281
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 2041-6962
pISSN - 0038-4283
DOI - 10.1111/sjp.12318
Subject(s) - proclamation , philosophy , character (mathematics) , comity , german , human rights , epistemology , sociology , law , linguistics , political science , mathematics , geometry , jurisdiction
Abstract This paper traces the development of Hannah Arendt’s thought on human rights between 1949 and 1958. Pace readers of Arendt who stress the unity of her thought as well as Arendt’s own proclamation to have not edited her works significantly, the paper shows that Arendt introduced a significant number of changes (of both major and minor character) into her writings on human rights. The most important of these changes is that the idea that a comity of nations may guarantee the right to have rights is, with time, abandoned. The paper further shows that many changes that Arendt makes can be explained by the different audiences Arendt addresses and that a significant number of the changes are due to the fact that Arendt worked in different languages. Accordingly, the German versions of her writings can be used to illuminate unclarities in the English versions of her texts and vice versa.