What does it mean that human rights derive from human dignity? - employing analytic metaphysics explanatory relations

Szymon Mazurkiewicz (Jagiellonian University)

Human dignity is widely considered as a foundation of human rights, for instance in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights we can read that human rights derive from human dignity. However, the exact character of this relation - derivation - is unknown. In fact, this problem can be extended to any proposed foundation of human rights (normative agency, human needs, etc.) - it is not known what kind of relation holds between human rights and its fundament. I will claim that we should look for a metaphysical explanatory relation and I will test three relations given by contemporary analytic metaphysics: reduction, supervenience and metaphysical grounding. I will argue that reduction does not hold, supervenience has to weak explanatory force but metaphysical grounding is a plausible relation to obtain between human rights and its foundation.