The Metaphysics of Human Rights (La Metafísica de los Derechos Humanos) (Spanish)

Human rights, as institutions, raise many interesting metaphysical or ontological questions. The most important are: What kind of entities are human rights? What properties do Human Rights bear?, and How this properties do form a structure, in order to create Human Rights? This paper aims to provide an answer to this question, but only taking into account the meaning of the expression “Human Rights” as legal rights, i.e. as individual rights guaranteed by international systems of Human Rights. The main claim is that Human Rights are a species of the genus legal rights. Human rights are legal rights whose differentia specifica is their “human” character. Thus, stating a concept of Human Rights presupposes, first, understanding the concept of legal rights, and, second, identifying the properties giving Human Rights their nature as “Human”. This paper analyzes the structure of Human Rights and their formal and material properties. Formal properties are: the guarantee of the right in international treatises of Human Rights, and its recognition and protection in the case law of international human rights courts. Material properties refer to the link between human rights and the concept of person that the liberal, democratic, and social state presupposes. This paper considers to what extend these properties are to be deemed necessary, sufficient or necessary and sufficient conditions for a right to be a Human Rights.