SILPEM 2020: Theories of Human Right

The main topic of the conference is Theories of Human Rights. Particular attention will be dedicated to three areas:

1) Human Rights in the Perspective of Analytical Philosophy: This section focuses on the use of methods and concepts of analytical philosophy in human rights research. We will discuss metaethical assumptions of these rights, their justification and questions about who should be their bearer - whether they are philosophically more defensible as rights of human persons than rights of human beings, or whether some animals should also be their bearers.

2) Universality of Human Rights: Core of the discussion in this session will be the extent to which human rights are universal. Attention will be focused especially on their tension with various types of relativism (cultural, epistemic, etc.).

3) Philosophical Arguments in the Interpretation of Specific Human Rights: Contributions discussing the philosophical foundations of specific human rights (political or social) are welcome in this section. It will also include speeches examining human rights in terms of various theories of rights (status theory, Hohfeld's relations, etc.).

At the end of the conference, a round table will be held to discuss how to best strengthen cooperation between legal philosophers and theorists researching in the fields of legal philosophy, methodology and ethics. Other possibilities of organizing conferences, seminars and publishing will be discussed. One of our ideas is to provide members of the Society with a newsletter on new publications, ideas and interesting international events in the respective fields. Our goal is to discuss what would be the best way to promote cooperation and provide our members (and legal science as a whole in respective fields) with useful tools.

The goal of the Society is to provide a place to encourage communication of legal scholars in the field of legal philosophy, methodology, theory, ethics and related fields. There is substantive amount of works in non-English languages. Many groundbreaking papers have been written in French, German, Italian, Spanish, many Slavic and other languages by past and present scholars. Our goal is organize forums to present ideas from many different countries and bring them into the debate on the global level. We do not exclude anglo-american scholars - just the opposite. The purpose of the Society is to connect anglo-american with the continental.   We want to promote translation of key philosophical works written in non-English languages and organize conferences and seminars of their authors and of experts focusing on key historical figures.   It would be a huge honor for us to host an event with you being one of the speakers. Please consider this as respectful and sincere invitation to our conference. Please, confirm your attendance and specify the topic you would like to speak about not later than on 15th December 2019 by sending an email at [email protected].   In case of any questions please do not hesitate to contact us using the same email address.