The Narrative Metaphysics of Human Rights

This article is about our understanding of an idea which has become one of the most internationally successful political doctrines of our day: the doctrine of human rights. This doctrine's popular success has often been attributed to its moral universalism, which flows from the claim that we have human rights simply by virtue of being human. It is my contention, however, that neither human rights, their claim to universalism, nor their link to our putative humanity can be understood without the acceptance, implicitly or explicitly, of a narrative philosophical tradition which provides the substantive content to which we appeal when invoking these terms.