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The Evolution of German Conservatism in the Rights Thought of Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt

  • Journal of Human Rights Studies
  • Abbr : JHRS
  • 2023, 6(2), pp.71-109
  • DOI : 10.22976/JHRS.2023.6.2.71
  • Publisher : Korean Association of Human Rights Studies
  • Research Area : Social Science > Law > Law of Special Parts > Human Rights / International Human Rights Law
  • Received : November 22, 2023
  • Accepted : December 13, 2023
  • Published : December 31, 2023

Chun, Jin Sung 1

1부산교육대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The Jewish-American political philosophers Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt, baptized into the ideological fold of German conservatism, set out to critique modern natural and human rights in order to address the loss of the “political.” For them, “rights” were not a set of legal provisions, but rather a critical lens for overthrowing established political systems. In the ideology of historicism and historical inevitability, which sought to compensate for the ferocity of natural/human rights and their consequent crisis, they found the root cause of the decline of political freedom. The neo-conservatism of West Germany at the time was an important intellectual source for the development of these ideas. Despite this common starting point, the two masters grasped the core of the problem differently and came to different conclusions. Whereas Strauss remained in aristocratic liberalism, looking back to ancient political philosophy for a standard of righteousness, Arendt saw mass democracy as undermining political freedom and sought a way to transcend the limits of sovereignty and grant equal political rights to all human beings. The concept of natality as a common human condition that grants the unknown Other the right to belong to humanity, and thus the right to have rights, was the culmination of Arendt’s human rights theory, which led to the evolution of German conservatism. This article aims to demonstrate that modern human rights do not emerge from a single historical lineage, but rather are a fiercely contested field in which different philosophies and ideologies have clashed.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.