The Rhetoric of Rights-Claiming: A Philosophical Assessment of the Nature, Possibilities, and Risks of the language of human rights.

Ever more grievances, aspirations, claims to goods, or demands for protection are formulated in the vocabulary of human rights. This has engendered important critiques. Both conservative and radical thinkers claim that serious moral or ethical concerns are being misframed as entitlements to formal rights. However, these debates on the effects of human rights language rarely stem from a systematic analysis of human right claims themselves. The goal of this project is, first, to carefully analyse what it means to formulate a moral issue as a rights claim and how such rights claims function in contemporary democratic practice. Secondly, it seeks to re-engage with the moral and radical critiques of human rights and to answer, in a more subtle way, the question of whether it is problematic (and in which cases) to express grievances and aspirations regarding societal challenges and justice issues as rights claims.